Evidence Based Education

Many educators I’ve worked with have ideas on how to transform or improve the educational experience. One of the ‘reasons’ that is often sited for NOT implementing these ideas is the ‘need’ for educational research to authenticate the validity of these ideas. Many people say the education system must be ‘evidence based’ to be sure they are doing the right thing.

Here’s an article about someone that has been doing educational research for 20+ years and has lost his idealism and energy for research being an enabler for change.

Education Research Could Improve Schools, But Probably Won’t
By Ronald A. Wolk
In my idealistic days 25 years ago, I believed that education research would lead us to the promised land of successful schools and high student achievement.

The article gives lots of reasons why research isn’t being used and won’t be as helpful as it could be. The guy goes on to say that we actually need to do the things we think about doing because if we don’t try something how will we ever have the research we need? That speaks to the need for ongoing experimentation as a way to learn.

One of the best strategies there is to keep up with the rate of change is to have many ongoing experiments going in parallel. The learning from these experiments would be iterated into other experiments and this cycle should continue – probably forever. This would make education – and the education system – a system that demonstrates learning and is a learning system (which it currently is not).

In my work with educators I’ve found significant resistance to the idea of doing experiments in education and learning. I have some compassion and understanding for that resistance as I know we are talking about experiments that involve human beings. That said, experimenting is one of the key ways that humans learn.

So how do we reconcile the need to experiment with the need for ‘evidence-based’ research?

Report sees online schools as models for reform
Think tank: Virtual schools are labs of innovation in teaching and learning that can be applied more broadly in K-12 education
By Robert L. Jacobson, Senior Editor
Virtual schooling is driving the very transformation in public education that advocates of school reform long have sought, says a new report. The report urges educators and policy makers to look to virtual schooling as a model for reform strategies that can be applied more broadly to education in general.

This article implies that online and virtual schools are providing an environment to try things that heretofore have not been tried in a physical setting. That’s interesting – and could be very useful. But that is just one place where experiments can and need to happen. They also need to happen in physical settings.

My suggestion is to start learning now and learn as fast as possible. That means we have to do experiments. So let the learning begin!

experiments