When a researcher tests an educational program, product, or policy in a randomized controlled trial and detects a significant effect on an outcome, the intervention is usually classified as something that “works.” When expected effects are not found, there is seldom an orderly and transparent analysis of plausible reasons why. Accumulating and learning from possible failure mechanisms is not standard practice in education research, and it is not common to design interventions with causes of failure in mind. This chapter develops Boruch and Ruby’s proposition that the education sciences would benefit from a systematic approach to the study of failure. We review and taxonomize recent reports of large-scale randomized controlled trials in K–12 schooling that yielded at least one null or negative major outcome, including the nature of the event and reasons (if provided) for why it occurred. Our purpose is to introduce a broad framework for thinking about educational interventions that do not produce expected effects and seed a cumulative knowledge base on when, how, and why interventions do not reach expectations. The reasons why an individual intervention fails to elicit an outcome are not straightforward, but themes emerge when researchers’ reports are synthesized.

当研究人员在随机对照试验中测试教育计划，产品或政策并发现对结果有重大影响时，通常将干预措施归类为“有效”的措施。当没有找到预期的效果时，很少有理由对可能的原因进行有条理和透明的分析。从可能的失败机制中进行积累和学习并不是教育研究中的标准做法，并且在设计干预措施时要考虑到失败的原因并不常见。本章提出了Boruch和Ruby的命题，即教育科学将从系统的失败研究方法中受益。我们回顾并分类了最近在K-12学校进行的大规模随机对照试验的报告，这些试验产生了至少一项无效或阴性的主要结果，包括事件的性质和发生原因（如果提供）。我们的目的是引入一个广泛的框架，以考虑不会产生预期效果的教育干预措施，并在何时，如何以及为什么干预措施未达到预期目标的基础上积累知识。个体干预未能得出结果的原因并不简单，但当研究人员的报告综合在一起时，主题就浮出水面了。