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Self-Concept, Higher-Order Thinking, and Teaching: Commentary on the Findings of Two Meta-Analyses

riety of learners, with careful experimental design and measurement to test the robustness of an effect. Each replication, particularly if it includes slight changes to test the outcomes, adds to the accumulation of evidence that an educational procedure is or is not effective under particular circumstances or for a particular category of learners. This is the kind of inquiry that guides the practice of medicine and many other interventions in human problems. The accumulation of knowledge about a given problem and its potential solutions obtained by a series of careful investigations, including meta-analyses, should guide the practice of education, as we and the works we cite suggest. "Theories" disconnected from practice and ideas promoted in the face of contrary evidence, better known as ideologies, not only deserve the scorn they receive in fiction (e.g., Roth, 2000) and from scientists (e.g., Feynman, 1998; Wilson, 1998) but lead to the kind of self-absorption, self-aggrandizement, and social horrors described so ably by critics of history, literature, and education (e.g., Conquest, 2000; Shattuck, 1999). This is true whether the matter under consideration is methods of teaching or their social contexts. Shattuck (1999) commented about one well-known chaired professor of education who apparently prefers ideology to practices based on sound evi-