Evaluation and Research in Education
Editor: Professor Keith Morrison, Inter-University Institute of Macau
Associate Editor: Professor Stephen Gorard, University of York
Statistical Adviser: Professor Colin Baker, University of Wales Bangor
Reviews Editor: Dr. Emma Smith, University of York
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Volume: 14 Number: 3 Page: 181–192
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Problematising Evidence-based Policy and Practice
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James Ridgway, Judith S. Zawojewski and Mark N. Hoover
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Evidence-based policy and practice (EBPP) is widely advocated, and for good reason. Here, some challenges to EBPP are identified, illustrated by a large-scale evaluation of a major curriculum development
project. Problems include: changes in educational goals, which necessitate the development of new measures of attainment; different time lines over which different patterns of result emerge; the challenge
of defining a complex treatment, such as a new curriculum; and the variability of effect size in different classrooms. Several approaches are offered as responses to these challenges. The paper argues that
much of the work on EBPP has focused on practice rather than on policy. Evidence-based policy will require detailed work on descriptions of systems and on systems change; more significantly, it will require
the development of a new field of endeavour, associated with macro-systemic change, that is to say, the study of systems undergoing radical change.
© Multilingual Matters 2000
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