The "teaching myths" manuscript: Reviewer X

What if an editor had invited us to a review a now-published manuscript when it was being considered for publication?

We noticed that writers around the Intertubes were referring to the report of a study touching on some matters of potential interest to readers of Special Education Today. The research report getting the attention was by Josh A. Cuevas, Bryan L. Dawson, and Gina Childress.¹ They reported about their study of university faculty members’ knowledge about the effectiveness of instructional practices such as direct instruction, learning styles, retrieval practice, and others. You might have seen references to the study on some popular sources.²

After one of us dropped comments on three of those blog posts, we thought the research paper might well be of sufficient interest that SET readers might want to learn about the study and our evaluation of it without having to chase those comments scattered across other sources.

So we thought that we would write a critique of the study. Then, on further reflection, we thought it might be interesting to write our analysis as if we had been asked to review the paper for publication.