Marzano, Number Juggler

Okay, I get it. Marzano gives a representation of the research, does his own analysis and synthesizes it into his own delineation of the factors which have an impact upon student performance. As I read through this section, I remembered the many evenings of Scrabble and beer with Jack Ward when my husband and I attended Rice University. There was an ongoing discussion of which discipline tended more toward navel contemplation, English or Philosophy. We all found it frustrating and uninspiring that much of the research in our disciplines, (Jack was a Professor in the English Department and David and I were graduate students in Philosophy) was devoted to research re-hash. While this is an important exercise to develop new thinking, it is so often used as the end product instead of the process. To be honest, I think Jack won the battle but lost the war. There actually was a LOT new thinking going on in Philosophy at the time. Science, technology, and world politics have provided the Philosophers with an abundance of new material. While there are many people who remain in their own little specialty, even the Kant scholar has the opportunity to use his parameters to examine our new world. I’m not sure the same can be said for the English scholar, although I’m certain there has been plenty of interesting new research.
Has Marzano created something new or just a research re-hash? I’m tending toward the new thinking side (I’m always hopeful). I believe that part of the issue in education is that we use different terminology to describe the same phenomena. There is definitely a need to come to an agreement as to what the terms mean across the research. He seems to have gathered and re-sorted everything in a way that is applicable to MY experience as a classroom teacher and parent. Figure 2.3 on page 19 does a lot for me as far as understanding what the research it talking about. Whether the researchers would agree as to how Marzano has reorganized them, I’ll never know, but I appreciate the effort to describe a beginning point as to School-Level Factors.