I had a colleague in our department who retired this past spring who had a
saying (among other notable sayings), "Nothing works unless the students
do."
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I have seen gain even in students who don't work. I have seen good gain in
students who hate what I am doing. Prisciall Laws has documented good gain,
but she admits that the students still barely crack open a book, and the
course evaluations go down. Then of course there is the study that showed
that teachers who taught without textbooks got superior results.
If you want really astonishing results you look at the paper by Beth
Thacker. Beth Thacker, Suzanne M. Lea, Eunsook Kim and Kelvin Trefz,
"Comparing Problem Solving Performance of Physics Students in Inquiry-Based
and Traditional Physics Courses," Am. J. Phys. 62 (7), 627-633 (1994).
Using PER elementary Ed students outperformed engineers in problem solving.
So the evidence that pedagogy can be extremely powerful is right there.
The evidence is there, but people resist looking at it, or using it. There
are to my knowledge NO journal articles which document that conventional
teaching can have any where the effect of using the PER techniques. The
evidence in favor of motivation do not have similar gains, to my knowledge.
Most of the research on text improvement show small gains. The evidence in
favor or technology is nil unless you separate out technology which enables
enhanced pedagogy. The evidence in favor of powerpoint, electronic
whiteboards... is not there.
Only one truism about education rings true according to the research. The
definition of the lecture system is "The knowledge passes from the notebook
of the professor to the notebook of the student without going through the
mind of either". This was told to me in the early 60s, and it has not
changed.