Evidence-based education is an approach to all aspects of education—from policy-making to classroom practice—where the methods used are based on significant and reliable evidence derived from experiments.
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It shares with evidence-based medicine the aim: to apply the best available evidence, gained from the scientific method, to educational decision making. "Evidence-based teaching" refers to the teaching aspects.
Neuroscience has identified a number of common beliefs (or neuromyths) which are not supported by evidence and include:
Other myths include
Low effect size interventions
John Hattie shows that many of the interventions favoured by government in many countries have low effect-sizes, but often high cost:
While all these things can show a positive effect, this is at an effect-size of around 0.2 - about the same improvement which can be achieved by partial use of some of the top-ten methods such as giving feedback, or using an advance organiser.
Effective professional development
For students' results to reflect these high effect-sizes, teachers need to develop the skills of their use. According to several studies, the time taken to do this lies somewhere between the learning of new facts and the development of a musical or sporting skill. While facts can be learned with a few repetitions, skills may need several hundred hours to develop. The evidence is that teachers start to become skilled with a particular method after about 10 repetitions with improvement plateauing after 6 months to 2 years of use. Continuing professional development (CPD) needs to reflect these findings. Teaching staff need the opportunity to learn about and then practice these skills. The role of CPD managers is to ensure that the time is available and the process takes place, not to instruct the teachers to follow directions. Where staff self-select their training either from external providers or from a range of sessions on a training day, they do not have the chance to develop their skills. Training, development and discussion of a smaller list of high-effect-size methods will be more effective. This process is sometimes referred to as supported experimentation or peer mentoring.
Implications for teachers
Teachers have more effect on the outcomes for their students than anyone else. The difference in outcomes for 2 teachers in the same college is significantly greater than the average of teachers in a 'good' rather than a 'weak' school. The main reason why some schools do better is that they have a higher percentage of teachers who use high effect-size methods. While individual teachers can improve their students' results using these methods in isolation, it is far more effective if they are adopted department or college-wide so that the discussions, observations and sharing-of-practice can take place easily.