Personal experience provides many of us with a great deal of knowledge.
Teaching is both science and art.
As an art, skillful, experienced practice contributes to effective teaching. Although it is often claimed that experience is the best teacher, it is also frequent to misinterpret what we perceive. Tendencies to protect one’s ego and self-esteem stand in the way of making objective conclusions from personal observations.
As a science, educational research provides vital information. Educators need valid information about what ways are best to teach students. Educational principles and theories derived from educational research serve as the tools by which educators become effective in their intentions to facilitate the optimum process of learning.
Types of Educational Research
- DESCRIPTIVE – attempt to describe things as they currently are (does not alter teaching approach or method)
- CORRELATIONAL – attempt to identify a relationship between two or more things (does not alter teaching approach or method; finds correlations but not causation)
- EXPERIMENTAL – attempt to demonstrate a causal relationship between two or more things (uses control and experimental group; has ethical issues about unfairness of testing a particular approach on a group when another effective approach is known)
[Source: Types of Educational Research. Retrieved from http://www.innovativelearning.com/educational_psychology/educational_research.html%5D
Learning to Teach. Teaching to Learn. 