Any time a human population is involved, prediction of casual relationships becomes cloudy and, some say, impossible. Many reasons exist for this; for example,
- researchers in classrooms add a disturbing presence, causing students to act abnormally, consciously or unconsciously;
- subjects try to please the researcher, just because of an apparent interest in them (known as the Hawthorne Effect); or, perhaps
- the teacher as researcher is restricted by bias and time pressures.
But such confounding variables don't stop researchers from trying to identify causal relationships in education. Educators naturally experiment anyway, comparing groups, assessing the attributes of each, and making predictions based on an evaluation of alternatives. They look to research to support their intuitive practices, experimenting whenever they try to decide which instruction method will best encourage student improvement.
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