[quoting Stewart, 26 Oct 96] I wholeheartedly agree that professionals need to encourage new lines of research and inquiry. Colleagues probe, search, and reflect then report their ideas and results so that peers will give serious consideration to their work (or work in progress). ... If those who govern the field block, obstruct, constrain, crush, and restrict a colleague's efforts, how will we grow intellectually?
Deborah Anne Stewart asks some excellent questions above, but there is an underlying tone in her note and earlier notes that suggests that they think some people (even me?) are trying to squash research on media before it even gets started. For example, Chet Hedden [21 Oct 96.a] wrote: "Research on this question has barely begun, and will eventually show the superiority of print over electronic media."
One of the signs of pseudoscience which I listed earlier [Reeves, 23 Oct 96.a] is: "3. Inadequate literature review--Cursory literature review focused on the results of closely related studies with little or no consideration of alternative findings." I suggest that anyone who thinks that research on media of the kind reported by Steve Tripp is new should go back and review some of the classic literature reviews on media research. May I suggest:
Allen, W.H. (1971). Instructional media research: Past, present, and future. AV Communication Review, 19, 5-18.
Clark, R.E. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning with media. Review of Educational Research, 53(4), 445-459.
Clark, R.E., & Salomon, G. (1986). Media in teaching. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching, Third edition. New York: Macmillan.
Levie, W.H., & Dickie, K. (1973). The analysis and application of media. In R.M.W. Travers (Ed.), Second handbook of research on teaching. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Lumsdaine, A.A. (1963). Instruments and media of instruction. In N. Gage (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Ross, S.M., & Morrison, G.R. (1989). In search of a happy medium in instructional technology research: Issues concerning external validity, media replications, and learner control. Educational Technology Research and Development, 37(1), 19-33.
Salomon, G. (1994). Interaction of media, cognition, and learning. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. (reprinted from 1979 version)
Schramm, W. (1977). Big media, little media. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
There are other classic reviews of media research going back at least to the 1940s, but I have only listed works from the 60's on. If you can't invest in reading these classic reviews, you can start with:
Clark, R.E. (1992). Media use in education. In M.C. Alkin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational research (6th Ed.) (pp. 805-814). New York: Macmillan.
or
Seibert, W.F., & Ullmer, E.J. (1982). Media use in education. In H.E. Mitzel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational research (5th Ed.) (pp. 1190-1202). New York: Macmillan.
I find it difficult to believe that Steve Tripp or his supporters on this forum would be familiar with this literature and still maintain this Tripp's study was an adequate challenge to Clark's conclusion that "the active ingredient in studies that find one medium superior to another is usually some uncontrolled aspect of the instructional method rather than the medium" (Clark, 1992, p. 806). At the very least, Tripp would have realized that what he was defining as media (text versus sound) and what Clark meant by media (programmed instruction, classroom teaching, instructional television, computer-based instruction, interactive multimedia, etc.) are completely different levels of phenomena. And if Clark is such a bogeyman for Tripp, why didn't he quibble with Levie and Dickie's (1973) conclusions that most media comparison studies to date were useless and that most learning objectives could be attained through "instruction presented by any of a variety of different media" (p. 859). Or with Schramm's (1977) observation that his review of the media research literature indicated that "learning seems to be affected more by what is delivered than by the delivery system" (p. 273).
All that said, I think Ms. Stewart's question (If those who govern the field block, obstruct, constrain, crush, and restrict a colleague's efforts, how will we grow intellectually?) is of the greatest importance. In fact, this is the subject of an essay in this week's edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education (Armstrong, 1996). Armstrong argues that despite peer review, scientific "journals still publish many errors, do not treat all authors fairly, and are far more likely to publish research that supports earlier work than to publish groundbreaking new studies." This is precisely the critique I have made of research in our field for at least a decade (cf. Reeves 1986, 1993, 1995) when I identified signs of pseudoscience in large percentages of the empirical, quantitative studies that dominated some of the primary research journals in our field, many of them research on media studies. Instead of discouraging new research, I have long pleaded for more openness to new questions, new methods, and (dare I say it) new paradigms. I don't expect anyone to change their views based on my critiques alone, but I hope they'll at least read the literature reviews cited above before they call for another generation of media studies a la Tripp.