science

What Works Clearinghouse

What Works Clearinghouse is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand What Works Clearinghouse rather than just read about it. In short: What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) is a digital library of educational research which focuses on evidence-based education. A 2006 report described that many researchers perceived the WWC to be passive cataloger of available research.

Key takeaways

What Works Clearinghouse belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect What Works Clearinghouse to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of What Works Clearinghouse from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) is a digital library of educational research which focuses on evidence-based education. A 2006 report described that many researchers perceived the WWC to be passive cataloger of available research. In contrast to that view, the paper described a series of opinionated subjective decisions which the WWC made about providing some educational research and declining to index another sort. WWC was established in 2002 as a project of the Institute of Education Sciences. The WWC recommendations for interpreting the results of single-case educational studies is the subject of discussion. The WWC has systems for evaluating the effectiveness of educational research in general and curricula. Various researchers use WWC itself as the platform through which they access other research. Some of the concerns expressed about WWC are that it appears to have difficulty keeping up with the research so it may not be current; and when a program is not listed on their database, it may be that it did not meet their criteria or they have not yet reviewed it, but it's not clear which. In addition Straight Talk on Evidence, authored by the Arnold Ventures LLC’ Evidence-Based Policy team, on January 16, 2018 expressed concerns about the validity of the ratings provided by WWC. It says WWC in some cases reported a "preliminary outcome when high-quality RCTs found no significant effects on more important and final educational outcomes".

References

Further reading Criticisms of What Works Clearinghouse by National Institute of Direct Instruction

External links Official website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with What Works Clearinghouse

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what What Works Clearinghouse claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to What Works Clearinghouse before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about What Works Clearinghouse ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of What Works Clearinghouse

In research: What Works Clearinghouse appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses What Works Clearinghouse in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: What Works Clearinghouse is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Bibliographic databases and indexes, Discipline-oriented digital libraries, Educational organizations based in the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for What Works Clearinghouse outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study What Works Clearinghouse in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what What Works Clearinghouse means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain What Works Clearinghouse out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is What Works Clearinghouse in simple terms?

Why does What Works Clearinghouse matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study What Works Clearinghouse?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on What Works Clearinghouse.