evidence use in education

Why evidence is important in educational practice and policy

Evidence is critical in education. Topical new research findings related to child and adolescent development, learning processes, education inequities, and the outcomes of specific pedagogical and classroom approaches must be shared with teachers, leaders, and policymakers. Alongside these, stakeholders need contextual information about the quality and nature of that evidence: have findings been replicated with different learners and in different contexts? Are the interpretations drawn by the researchers valid reflections of the data, or are other interpretations possible? How robust are the phenomena? 

Education is multidisciplinary and should draw on evidence from the multiple fields that inform ecologies of learning and teaching. Cognitive and psychological sciences are vital for understanding the psychological foundations of learning, for example, but do not inform our understanding of educational and social systems and their impact. Evidence-based practices must weave together insights from different fields in a way that is rigorous and robust. 

Some evidence is widely replicated and universally applicable (e.g. matching pedagogy to so-called student “learning styles” does not work – and may in fact penalise learning), whereas other evidence may be relevant only in particular contexts (e.g. worked examples are effective in supporting problem solving in Maths, particularly for well-defined problems and novice learners, but are less relevant in English). Supporting teachers, leaders, and policymakers to know what phenomena are universal, or not, and why, is vital – as are discussions about what evidence relates to which aspects of development and learning. 

Critiques of evidence-based practice in education

Evidence-Based Practices have been criticised in EduResearch Matters recently on the grounds that they are harmful and oppressive. These critiques raise important questions regarding the slimness of evidence used by some policymakers; the peculiar interests of some advocates in oversimplifying particular research findings and excluding others; and the focus on experimental interventions to the exclusion of other useful methodologies that can offer different types of insights about education, students, and learning. 

Such critiques can, though, be misread by stakeholders as suggesting that evidence itself is unimportant. This mischaracterisation is unhelpful. Instead, we must be clear that evidence matters – as does the robustness of that evidence; its generalisability or specificity; its ecological validity; and the contextualisation of that evidence for teachers and teaching. 

Those with limited expertise in educational research, including policy-makers, should turn to educational researchers with genuine expertise in specific domains to understand what research shows as our “best-bets”. That is, the pedagogical practices shown to best achieve specific educational outcomes in specific contexts; the degree to which prior knowledge, discipline, age, social context, and learner characteristics affect these bets; and the background knowledge about learners, social contexts, and development that is needed to support other related aspects of schooling such as wellbeing and classroom behaviour.  

The role of universities in promoting evidence-based practice

A key justification for the positioning of teacher education in universities is the need to connect school practice with research scholarship to enhance student learning. As outlined by Aspland (2006), however, this has not always been the case. In the 1800s, school-based apprenticeship models were widely used in Australia. While some conservative commentators prefer this model still, concerns emerged that instructional skills among trainees were poor. In the 1900s, teacher colleges focused predominantly on the craft of teaching. It was not until the late 1980s, and following moves by minister Dawkins to amalgamate colleges of advanced education with universities, that teacher educators in Australia came to adopt more scholarly and theoretical approaches connecting research evidence from different disciplines to teacher education and practice. 

Most academics in Schools of Education today have both teaching and research roles, and there is very little peer-reviewed research in education in Australia that does not come from a university faculty. Key research insights related to cognitive load, worked examples, expertise, reading science, goal setting, neuromyths, formative and summative assessment, EAL/D learners, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and cultures, and multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) – all prominent components of the Teacher Education Expert Panel’s new core content – come directly from expert researchers located in Schools of Education.  

Emphasis on peer review

Note here our emphasis on independent peer-review: a universal gold standard in research accountability and quality. TEQSA notes that research, at a minimum, must (i) lead to and/or transmit new knowledge or advances in creative or professional practice in a field, (ii) be a planned, purposive intellectual inquiry, and (iii) produce outputs that are subject to external, independent scrutiny. The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research similarly states that research must be transparent and must be tested through peer review

Of course external organisations may also conduct relevant educational research provided they adhere to the Australian Code. The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one such example, with an NHMRC-registered Human Research Ethics Committee and peer-reviewed research subject to external oversight and scrutiny. 

The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) recommend that teachers have high confidence in an approach only after having “read research published in peer-reviewed academic journals OR conducted by a trustworthy source such as AERO”. This highlights a dilemma for policymakers, school leaders, and teachers seeking accessible evidence not restricted to refereed journal articles – how do such stakeholders confidently differentiate the quality of the range of excerpts, explainers, popular press and commercial tools available and promoted to them without underlying peer-reviewed evidence? And how can university researchers with expertise in ensuring quality support them?  

What should evidence look like in practice? 

To support teachers, leaders, and policy-makers to engage in evidence-based practices, we highlight three important caveats. 

First, context matters. A key role for teachers and school leaders in the translation of research evidence into practice is in knowing how different research insights will apply within their local context. As educational researchers we must be explicit in highlighting who a body of evidence is relevant to, for what purposes, and what boundaries exist to generalisation beyond these conditions. 

The need to account for context does not mean one is free to choose their own adventure. On the contrary, all relevant findings must be accounted for. The quality of that evidence must also be accounted for: peer review is a minimum standard but does not replace incisive questions about how research is conducted or what, collectively, the findings can tell us. There is a sense of intellectual humility in being willing to change one’s approach in line with valid and robust evidence.

Second, evidence evolves. A recent review of well-known classroom strategies emerging from cognitive science found that some had been tested across year groups and subjects (e.g. retrieval practice), while others were tested predominantly in the middle years of schooling and in Maths or Science (e.g. interleaving). Where evidence is simply missing, and not contrary to practice, teachers and policymakers must use sound judgement to consider how relevant related evidence might be. 

Description which has grown capital letters

Given the evolution of knowledge, we should also be wary of definite characterisations of evidence that don’t appear open to nuance or change. The Science of Reading (together with other ‘Sciences of’) is an interesting example of a “description which has grown capital letters”: a linguistic phenomenon in which a field of study can, in the wrong hands, act semantically like a proper name – it becomes rigid and resistant to investigation and may no longer denote the field of inquiry to which it originally referred. Reading science, cognitive science, or psychological science are safer characterisations and offer much evidence that is useful in classrooms. 
Third, purpose matters. Evidence should not supplant philosophical discussions and sociologically informed considerations of what education is for or what it can reasonably be expected to do. Rather, evidence should support decision-making about how best to achieve specific educational goals within specific subjects and for specific learners.

Left to right: Penny Van Bergen is head of school, School of Education, University of Wollongong, Mary Ryan is executive dean, Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University, Deborah Youdell is the dean of Macquarie School of Education, Macquarie University.

It’s not just identifying quality evidence, it’s quality use of it that makes the difference

Medical experts around the world are channeling rapidly evolving, and sometimes contradictory, research evidence to inform politicians and the public on the best way forward during this pandemic. A high level of expertise is required to navigate this torrent of information, determine the most appropriate evidence, communicate it, and help work out ways to apply it across diverse populations.

School teachers and leaders, like medical experts, demonstrate a similar expertise to determine appropriate evidence from a range of sources, including student data and research evidence, then adapt and apply it to inform decision-making, planning and implementation in diverse education settings.

Yet, how school educators access and use research evidence is still far from well understood. So at Monash University we have embarked on a large scale, five year project to investigate how teachers in Australia use research evidence to inform their practice, and to help educators who are interested in improving the quality of their use of evidence in their classrooms and schools .

Our project

Understanding how educators use research evidence is an emerging field of research in education and is at the heart of the Monash Q Project. Our research is a first for Australia.

We began by searching more than 10,000 scholarly records from databases across education, health, social work and policy, as well as over 100 documents and 65 organizational websites to understand what it means to use evidence well. We reviewed and synthesised this global knowledge and, coupled with regular feedback from project partners and stakeholders, used it as the basis for defining what quality use of evidence might be in education, and to develop a best practice framework for use of evidence in classrooms and schools.

We defined the quality use of research evidence in education as: the thoughtful engagement with and implementation of appropriate research evidence, supported by a blend of individual and organisational enabling components within a complex system.

Our framework describes the key characteristics of quality use of research evidence that are salient to education. It focuses on the quality of use of evidence as well as the quality of evidence.

Quality use of research evidence framework

Our framework is a resource for anyone interested in improving the use of research evidence within and across all levels of schools and school systems.

At the centre of our framework are two core components we believe are needed to use evidence well. The first is the ability to find and understand appropriate research evidence, and the second is to be able to thoughtfully engage with and implement the evidence.

The ability to identify appropriate research evidence

Our research indicated that being able to identify appropriate research evidence well involves, among other things, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of research evidence, as well as their potential and practicality to inform teaching and learning. 

According to a principal in a P-12 school in Queensland who was involved in our study, using appropriate research evidence well means

“considering the context of the research, and working out the extent to which the research applies to our local context and students”.

The ability to thoughtfully engage with and implement the evidence

Alongside the ability to identify appropriate research evidence is the ability to thoughtfully engage with and implement evidence. This involves engagement with the evidence, shared deliberation about its meaning and effective integration of aspects of evidence within practice. Our research indicated that to do this well includes questioning assumptions about the evidence within the context of practice, working collaboratively in professional learning communities, and working to adapt strategies over time. 

In our study a middle school leader in a Victorian High School emphasised,

“all teachers involved in implementing a program or practice that purports to be informed by research evidence would have sufficient professional learning time ALLOCATED to read, review, and critically analyse that evidence”.

The inter-dependencies of these two components of our framework are more nuanced than simply applying research to practice, particularly in highly variable contexts such as schools and classrooms. 

Cross sector insights

Our cross-sector research in health, social care and policy provided insights around evidence use, highlighting a central role for practitioner expertise in using evidence well. Practitioner expertise was characterised as the ability to apply external and practical knowledge in context – referred to as tacit and explicit knowledge. Far from just following the evidence, all sectors emphasised the need for such expert interaction with theevidence.

In one of the first and most enduring definitions of evidence-based medicine, American-Canadian physician and a pioneer in evidence-based medicine, David Lawrence Sackett, emphasised the need to balance external evidence with expertise:

“Without clinical expertise, practice risks becoming tyrannized by external evidence, for even excellent external evidence may be inapplicable to or inappropriate for an individual patient. Without current best external evidence, practice risks becoming rapidly out of date, to the detriment of patients.”

Practitioner expertise and professionalism

These ideas are relevant in the education sector, where educators have to navigate education research, some more fashionable than others, to determine what is most appropriate for their own students. With the growing expectation for Australian schools to use research evidence to underpin their improvement efforts, the challenge of building expertise (and confidence) to use evidence becomes more salient.

According to British educationalist, Professor Dylan Wiliam, “Evidence is important, of course, but what is more important is that we need to build teacher expertise and professionalism so that teachers can make better judgments about when, and how, to use research.”

The need to understand and support such expertise raises the question: How can practising ‘thoughtful engagement with and implementation of appropriate research evidence’ become part of educational professionalism?

As our experiences of the COVID-19 crisis have shown, evidence does not speak for itself but depends on careful decisions about whether, when and how to use and act on it in specific contexts, raising the question: How can quality use of research help us understand the potential and limitations of research evidence in responding to educational challenges?

Responding to the current pandemic requires growing our collective understanding of and respect for the level of expertise needed to negotiate an ever-changing body of knowledge and then apply it effectively in a rapidly unfurling context. In education, the Monash Q Project is working to better understand what this kind of expertise looks like among teachers and leaders in our schools.

Now, more than ever, a concerted effort is needed to understand, develop and support educators and schools to make better evidence-informed decisions to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

Connie Cirkony is a research fellow with the Q Project in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, investigating how educators use evidence in their practice. Connie’s background is in science and environmental education, and in educational practice and policy. Her research is focused on improving students learning experiences. Connie is on Twitter @ConnieCirkony

Lucas Walsh is Professor of Education Policy and Practice, Youth Studies, in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. He is currently a chief investigator on The Q Project (Quality Use of Evidence Driving Quality Education) funded by The Paul Ramsay Foundation. Recent books include: Imagining Youth Futures: University Students in Post-Truth Times (Springer, with Rosalyn Black), and Young People in Digital Society: Control Shift (Palgrave Macmillan with Amanda Third, Philippa Collin, and Rosalyn Black,.

Mark Rickinson is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His work is focused on understanding and improving the use of research in education. He is currently leading the Monash Q Project, a five-year initiative with the Paul Ramsay Foundation to improve the use of research evidence in Australian schools.

Joanne Gleeson is a Research Fellow with the Q Project in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Joanne draws from cross-sectoral professional experience in executive human resource management, business consulting, careers counselling, education and education research. Her research is focused on improving adolescents’ career identity, employability and education-work transitions. Joanne is on Twitter @dr_gleeson

Mandy Salisbury is a Research Assistant in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. She has worked in the early years and primary sectors in teaching and leadership roles, and also has commercial experience. Mandy has a passion for supporting teachers and pursuing equitable educational opportunities and outcomes.

Access the Monash Q Project’s Quality Use of Research Education Framework

Access the Discussion Paper “Towards Quality Use of Research Evidence In Education.

Learn more about the Monash Q Project

Join the Twitter Conversation @MonashQProject

Readers are encouraged to connect with the Q Project and be part of strategic dialogue and system-level change around research evidence use in Australian education.