can we generalize? discussion

I’m studying for my Academic class and don’t understand how to answer this. Can you help me study?

Please Understand that if you take this assignment, you will need to take another that I post on Friday about the same papers … that other assignment you will get paid separately and the same as this and will only be about 4 paragraphs. It just makes it easier and sound the same to the professor if just one person writes it. I cant see the assignment until Friday but I know it is about this. only use the resources provided. this is for a foreign student, so the english can be very bad. do not use huge words!!! also 4 to 5 sentences per paragraph will work. and 2-3 paragraphs

• 
  
  Read all 4 overview papers

Read Murnane & Willett (Chapt. 3), Chapter 8 in Creswell (focusing on pages 158-177), and te bottom of page 203- top of page 204 in Creswell

This week, we’ll be examining a set of research designs – experiments, quasi-experiments, and non-experimental designs – that make use of quantitative methods and data to examine relationships. In education, for example, we might want to know the relationship between our use of a practice and student outcomes (like test scores!). Put simply, we’re chasing one of the key questions driving education research: “what works?”

Ideally, we’d like to generalize the answer to that question – “what works” – to a broad population, so that it can help us to make important decisions about things like education policy. Which, of course, raises an interesting question:

• Can we really produce “generalizable” knowledge in education research? Do you think it’s possible to use our tools to generate answers to questions that apply across our wide variety of schools? Or – as some critics claim – is the nature of the educational enterprise too dependent on context?

As always, try to have your first post (2-3 paragraphs)