Evidence-based education?

Neurologist Steven Novella over at Neurologica, poses the question why there's not a stronger link between science and the practice of education? Why is there no evidence-based education, analogous to evidence-based medicine?

I have been asking essentially the same question for the past year here at Occam's Donkey. I have pointed out many of the quackeries found in education and will continue to do so, as I've not even scratched the surface.

We have been been working for some time on implementing evidence-based education at the school where I am the headmaster, Muriel Brand School. A page on the school's website deals with what we're trying to achieve:

Policy on evidence supported approaches to teaching and therapy

The school's mission statement reads as follows:

The provision of excellent, evidence supported, special education
and therapeutic treatment to learners with special educational needs.

The school recognises that due in part to the difficulties of research in applied settings, sound empirical evidence for the efficacy of specific therapies and teaching methods is not always available. We believe, however, that given,

1. A coherent theoretical base consistent with current scientific knowledge
2. Congruence between the theory and the practical application of the approach
3. The responsible and transparent implementation of the approach by its practitioners
4. The critical evaluation of available research, even if flawed
it is possible to distinguish between acceptable approaches and those that tend towards pseudoscience or even quackery.

All therapy and teaching approaches used in the school, have been judged according to the criteria above.

In a previous post on evidence-supported practice, I touched briefly on what I meant by that term and why evidence-supported rather than evidence-based in the educational context.

We are not close to there yet, whether evidence-based or evidence-supported. We pay lip service to the ideal, but the reality is that we often fall short. The South African branches of the professions represented within the school - education, the therapies (physio, speech and OT), and to some extent psychology - do not typically insist on a strong evidence base for their activities. Scientific thinking does not feature at all in the training of teachers and did not do so enough in the past in the case of therapists (it seems to be improving). Scientific evidence to support teaching and therapy is available, but is fragmented and not easily accessible at school level. Passive resistance with the unstated objection - "I've always done it this way and it works for me" - is sometimes an obstacle. No, we're not there yet, and I doubt it's different for other schools.

In South Africa, some teacher unions have played a valuable role in teacher development through teacher training. Regrettably, however, they currently do not seem to insist on any form of evidence base for their courses. Two prominent unions, NAPTOSA and SAOU, have for instance supported approaches that in my opinion are total nonsense, namely Mind Moves and Neurolink.

Prof. Faith Bischof (Physiotherapy, Wits University) and I recently oganized a conference on cerebral palsy with the theme of "Towards the evidence-supported management of cerebral palsy in South Africa: Are we there yet?". We were able to get Dr. Charlene Butler as the keynote speaker. She was one of the initiators of the valuable range of AACPDM reviews of evidence in the field of cerebral palsy. Her input was valuable in getting therapists and teachers to buy into the ideal of evidence-supported practice in the field of cerebral palsy. Regrettably, however, the conclusion of the conference had to be that we're not there yet. And in education as a sector? Not even close.