Problematising Evidence-based Policy and Practice

Abstract

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.