Judging Research in Teacher Education

nearly 10 years ago, called for “scientifically based research” and “evidence-based practices. ” This 2001 legislation has led to subsequent changes in federal funding policies that encourage the use of a more quantitative approach to mea-suring cause-and-effect relationships between educational conditions and outcomes to produce generalized findings that can inform policy decision making (Feuer, Towne, & Shavelson, 2002). Consequently, these government policies have spawned debates over what constitutes quality educa-tional research and what direction the development of future educational research should take.1 In this editorial, we examine the questions of “What is quality research? ” and “How can we judge it? ” by referencing research in teaching and teacher education. We review briefly the landscape and characteristics of research in teacher educa-tion. Then, using the National Research Council’s (NRC; 2002) guidelines as a framework, we offer ideas about what consti-tutes quality research in teacher education. Lastly, drawing on our experience reviewing 702 manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) during our inaugural year as editors, we discuss some of the standards that we believe are important for judging the quality of research in teacher education. In doing this, we hope to stimulate discus-sions about how reviewers and editors evaluate research and how the reporting of research in teacher education can be improved.