Quantitative research designs and approaches

The main aim of science education research is to improve science learning. In order to do so, as researchers, we need to understand the complex interplay of teaching and learning in science classrooms. If science instruction is to be improved, it is not enough to understand how people learn about a particular topic. In the reality of the classroom, a tremendous number of variables affect the teaching and learning of science. This includes variables on (1) the individual level, such as students’ prior knowledge, (2) the classroom level, such as the teachers’ content knowledge, and (3) the system level, such as school funding (Fischer et al., 2005). However, research is about evidence. Therefore, many established and necessarily oversimplified models of teaching and learning science must be iteratively refined in order to account for increasingly more specific variables on the respective levels. And the quality of evidence is of particular importance.