This is the third day in our series of posts on AARE’s education priorities for the 2025 federal election. Today’s posts are about research-informed policy.

Research-informed policy making is critical in education. Unlike policymaking in energy, international relations, or defence, everyone has been to school. This means that everyone feels some level of expertise when commenting on “what works” in education: how teachers should teach, what they should teach, and how students will learn best. Unfortunately, assumed knowledge is often inconsistent with evidence.

Effective policymaking must consider how research-informed insights from different disciplines informing education knit together. When drawing on assumed knowledge, however, we are susceptible to three errors in thinking. First, we overemphasise our own personal experiences. We may downplay students’ diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, experiences of belonging, neurodivergence, and so on. These differences matter if we are to ensure equitable school opportunities for all children.

Second, we are misled by sensationalist media narratives. Scanning 65,000 news articles over 25 years, Nicole Mockler at the University of Sydney found perpetual criticism of teachers. Yet, among the articles, there was little focus on school funding, teacher workloads, or other systemic issues. Crunching NAPLAN outcomes from 2008 to 2022, Sally Larsen at the University of New England found little statistical evidence to support ongoing media claims of declines in student achievement. 

Seduced by popular learning myths

Third, we are seduced by popular learning myths. One myth tells us that all students learn differently and so we should attend to their unique styles. Research tells us although processing speed and capacities may differ, the same basic cognitive patterns for all learners involve a combination of attention, working memory, encoding, and long-term memory. A second myth suggests that motivation only emerges after success. Research tells us that motivation and learning are mutually supportive. To avoid these errors in thinking, policymakers must turn to researchers with genuine expertise across these topics.

In recent policy discussions aimed at stemming the current teacher shortage, politicians from both sides of politics have decried a lack of evidence underpinning Initial Teacher Education programs. So too have a range of media commentators and think tanks. The Strong Beginnings report produced in mid-2023 recommended four reform areas, including the mandating of “core content” for ITE programs and performance metrics for providers. Ironically, however, little evidence of a problem in ITE quality or a connection to teacher shortages currently exists.

Performance metrics create perverse incentives

In research I recently conducted with other NSW Deans of Education, we mapped stakeholder responses to the Strong Beginnings reforms. We found little resistance to core content topics from higher education providers, regulatory authorities, employers, or teachers’ associations. But there was concern for generalisability and for ensuring other key topics – such as socioemotional development, bullying, creativity, and educational equity – are also represented. Stakeholders also highlighted evidence that Australian teachers are leaving the profession due to employment conditions, and that performance metrics often create perverse incentives working against their original aims. These findings are important, because they suggest that proposed policy solutions might not address the substantive problems that they are intended for. If policy decisions address ghost problems, and if they have unintended consequences, then they will fail to achieve success.

Importantly, when considering research-informed policy, policymakers must be willing to work with the very researchers who are producing research evidence. They must ask what different studies, theories, and disciplines informing education can and cannot tell us. To take cognitive load theory as a popular example, there is robust evidence that novice learners cannot hold too many things in mind at once. This evidence existed in cognitive science well before the emergence of cognitive load theory and has extensive research support. Building on this understanding, cognitive load theory makes important contributions in demonstrating that instructional design matters if we are to avoid cognitive overload. However, it cannot tell us about the more elaborative and generative activities that best support deep encoding. That research comes from elsewhere in cognitive science. It also cannot tell us our goals within specific disciplines. These are philosophical questions.  

We need fearless policymakers

To seek genuine solutions to wicked educational problems, we need fearless policymakers who are willing to consider evidence from the multiple disciplines and subdisciplines informing education. Then the need to marry these against the learning and developmental outcomes that we consider most important within Australian society. These include disciplinary knowledge, critical thinking, informed citizenry, and so on. We need policymakers who are thorough, who turn to researchers and teachers to understand the connection between research and application, and who do not rely solely on slick edu-celebrities or think tanks simply because it is expedient. We need policymakers who can change course in the face of compelling evidence.

There are edu-celebrities of every brand in education. They are for and against creativity, for and against various brands of explicit teaching, for and against phonics, for and against play-based learning. Some of these views are evidence-based, some are not. Evidence-based policymaking means turning away from populist views and towards genuine topic experts who have the expertise to advise how robust particular phenomena are, whether suggested applications are generalisable or specific to particular ages and disciplines, and how these insights knit together with other phenomena, explanations, and educational goals. Such policymaking is more challenging, but worth it. Our children deserve it.  

Penny Van Bergen is an associate professor, psychology in education, in the School of Education, Macquarie University. She is former head of school and honorary professor at the University of Wollongong. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy