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Evidence-Based Education Policy: What Evidence? What Basis? Whose Policy?

ISBN: 978-1-405-19411-2

May 2009

Wiley-Blackwell

210 pages

Description
This book raises important questions about the extent to which policy can be derived from research and about the kind of evidence which should inform policy.


  • Challenges contemporary orthodoxies and offers constructive alternatives
  • Critiques the narrower conceptions of evidence which might inform policy advanced by the ‘what works’ movement
  • Investigates the logical gaps between what can be shown by research and the wider political requirements of policy
  • Examines the different educational research traditions e.g. large population studies, individual case studies, personal narratives, action research, philosophy and ‘the romantic turn’
  • Calls for a more subtle understanding of the ways in which different forms of enquiry may inform policy and practice
  • Discusses the recognition and utilisation of the insights offered by the rich variety of educational research traditions available to us
About the Author
David Bridges is Professor Emeritus at the University of East Anglia and Emeritus Fellow at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

Paul Smeyers is Professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Leuven, Belgium.

Richard Smith is Professor of Education at Durham University.

Features

  • Raises important questions about the extent to which policy can be derived from research and about the kind of evidence which should inform policy
  • Challenges contemporary orthodoxies and offers constructive alternatives
  • Critiques the narrower conceptions of evidence which might inform policy advanced by the ‘what works’ movement
  • Investigates the logical gaps between what can be shown by research and the wider political requirements of policy
  • Examines the different educational research traditions e.g. large population studies, individual case studies, personal narratives, action research, philosophy and ‘the romantic turn’
  • Calls for a more subtle understanding of the ways in which different forms of enquiry may inform policy and practice
  • Discusses the recognition and utilisation of the insights offered by the rich variety of educational research traditions available to us