Making the most of the evidence in education

Format: Lessons

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Language/s: English

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Resource Link: View the Lesson (PDF)
Short Description:

A pamphlet to guide people using research evidence when deliberating about educational policies.

Key Concepts addressed:

• 1-3 Association is not the same as causation
• 3-1 Do the outcomes measured matter to you?
• 2-16 Confidence intervals should be reported

Details

‘Making the Most of the Evidence in Education’ is written by Nick Cowan and Nancy Cartwright and intended for teachers, for school heads, for boards of governors – for anyone who has to settle on policies, programmes or approaches, whether for a single student, a whole class, a school or a local area. It supposes that research evidence can help make for better decisions about what will work for your student, your class, your school or in your local area. But it recognises that there’s no recipe for how to use research evidence, there’s no simple read across from research evidence, no matter how good the quality of it, to what will be likely to work for you here and now. You have to reason that out as best you can. This pamphlet provides some information and some strategies that can make that reasoning easier and more reliable.