What is the best practice for using evidence from research studies in schools? Dr Sally Riordan (IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society) argues that we don’t have enough evidence to be confident that it should always be the first port of call in The Conversation.
Evidence is obviously a good thing. We take it for granted that evidence from research can help solve the post-lockdown crises in education – from how to keep teachers in the profession to how to improve behaviour in schools, get children back into school and protect the mental health of a generation.
But my research and that of others shows that incorporating strategies that have evidence backing them into teaching doesn’t always yield the results we want.
The Department for Education encourages school leadership teams to cite evidence from research studies when deciding how to spend school funding. Teachers are more frequently required to conduct their own research as part of their professional training than they were a decade ago. Independent consultancies have sprung up to support schools to bring evidence-based methods into their teaching.
