Some Controversies On The Statistical Methods Used In The Educational Research

This paper aims to draw attention to two aspects on the use of mathematical statistics for educational research purposes. Firstly, we need to take care about the adequacy of the application of a mathematical statistics method to examine various phenomena of teaching-learning process. As an example considered in our paper is the adequacy of the Student's t-test for testing hypotheses in the educational researches. Secondly, we must take care that research in the field of pedagogy were urgent and the experiment itself did not destroy the natural character of the phenomena. As an example, we try to understand how the computer affects the quality of mastering the material under study and the personal development of student. The results of our study on the two levels of interest are: Firstly, the use of Student's t-test is not adequacy with any type of educational data analyzed, if it does not meet the condition of normality. Secondly, two experiments in question to understand how the computer affects the learning process highlight different things in statistics: once the independence of the two variables and another once the existence of a relationship of dependency, but indirect one. Both highlights are controversial with the general perception on the positive effect of computer-aided learning on students’ performances, so that a weak experimental design could alter the nature of a relationship between random variables.