ABSTRACT
Classroom research is a valuable complement to laboratory research, particularly when used to test interventions rooted in cognitive approaches, such as those described by other authors contributing to this volume. My goal in this chapter is to share research design principles that are both experimentally rigorous and practically possible in early childhood education settings. While Phye (Chapter 7, this volume) emphasizes methodological approaches that are relevant at the district and state levels, I focus on practical ways to orchestrate experimental research at the classroom level within one or more schools. Because the challenges of testing interventions in classrooms are common across topics and contexts, I suggest general experimental approaches for overcoming them, together with brief glimpses of studies exemplifying each approach, most of which have been conducted at the Children’s School. Classroom studies can be ideal settings for testing many hypotheses about teaching, learning, curriculum design, assessment, etc., if they utilize valid experimental designs and generate useful qualitative and quantitative data.
