Education has always been shaped by ideas, traditions and individual philosophies, but in recent years there has been a growing expectation that teaching should also be guided by high-quality research. Research can undoubtedly support better decision-making in schools, but the challenge lies in understanding how to use it without oversimplifying the complexity of the classroom. This tension sits at the heart of the debate about whether education can ever truly become evidence-based.
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The power of evidence-based education
In 2013, Ben Goldacre wrote a document that changed the course of education in the UK. It was a manifesto for building research into education. His opening line set the tone perfectly. He wrote:
“I think there is a huge prize waiting to be claimed by teachers. By collecting better evidence about what works best, and establishing a culture where this evidence is used as a matter of routine, we can improve outcomes for children, and increase professional independence.”
Goldacre argued that education could learn from another field where research had long guided practice. He went onto highlight the advancements made in the medical field in adopting such an approach:
“Medicine has leapt forward with evidence-based practice, because it is only by conducting randomised trials, fair tests comparing one treatment against another, that we have been able to find out what works best. Outcomes for patients have improved as a result, through thousands of tiny steps forward.”
This message resonated widely. Teachers, researchers and policymakers increasingly recognised the potential of research to inform curriculum design, behaviour approaches and teaching strategies. Conferences grew, research summaries became more accessible, and schools began to place greater value on professional learning grounded in evidence.
Indeed, in the years since, there has been an explosion of research in education and, indeed, interest from teaching professionals in it. For example, researchers have reported that out of over one thousand randomised control trials in education between 1980 and 2016, over three quarters of these have been done in the past ten years alone.
Although we can take some inspiration from medicine, we cannot replicate the medical model in education completely. Researcher Gene V. Glass, who incidentally was the first person to coin the term ‘meta-analysis’, noted that:
“Medicine enjoys the advantages of a simpler domain: treatments are packaged in standard form; outcome measures are generally agreed upon; success and failure tend to be counted on the same metric. Education research enjoys none of these.
That is why our biggest challenge is to tame the wild variation in our findings, not by decreeing this or that set of standard protocols but by describing and accounting for the variability in our findings.”
This acknowledgement is important. Education is shaped not just by interventions but by relationships, culture, values and community.
Evidence-based vs evidence-informed
This is why education will always need to be evidence-informed, not evidence-based. Ben Goldacre finished his manifesto with a clear vision for what that means. He wrote:
“It is not about robotically following the numerical output of randomised trials; nor is it about ignoring the evidence, and following your hunches and personal experiences instead. We do best by using the right combination of skills to get the best job done.”
This idea has since become widely accepted. Evidence-informed practice places research at the centre of professional thinking while still recognising the importance of context, judgement and experience. It supports teachers to ask better questions, to challenge assumptions and to refine their craft, without suggesting that every answer lies in a published paper.
This idea of drawing on a combination of sources is one that has also been proposed by educator Cat Scutt. Her work on this has helped the profession make huge leaps forward based on her ideas around the difference between being evidence-based and evidence-informed. The former sees an individual blindly follow research. The latter, a more nuanced approach, sees decision-making based on a combination of research findings and one’s own experience, as well as the current context.
In an interview with her, she summarised for us:
“The whole principle of evidence informed practice is not to say the research says this is exactly what we must do. We can look at what the research suggests, but here is my professional experience and my professional judgement that is interpreting that research taking into account the context I work in.”
This blended approach is perhaps the most realistic and empowering position for the profession.
Final Thoughts
Evidence does not replace teacher expertise. It strengthens it. It does not replace teacher judgement; it informs it. It helps educators avoid common pitfalls, make more informed choices and justify their decisions with greater confidence.
So, while education may never be fully evidence-based in the strictest sense, it can be thoughtfully and intelligently evidence-informed.
