“Good” choices vs “what really works”: a comparison of evidence-based practice in medicine and education

Lucinda Mcknight,Andy Morgan

doi:10.1007/s13384-022-00509-4

Lucinda Mcknight, Andy Morgan

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-022-00509-4

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Abstract

Evidence-based practice, in a form which draws predominantly on quantitative research and privileges randomised controlled trials as research methods, has been translated from medicine into education. It follows that combining understanding of both disciplines may contribute to insights into the costs and benefits of this project. This article shares findings from a small study initiated by a medical doctor and teacher educator to compare versions of practice and professionalism offered by two texts from our respective disciplines. These texts advocate evidence-based practice for patients and students with disability and/or special needs. We describe our methodology and methods for interdisciplinary comparative textual analysis and share how this comparison contributes to understanding ways evidence-based practice is performed in education. In particular, we compare the versions of professionalism imagined in these cases and ask questions for policy and practice about motivations for the choices made in the apparently neutral process of “translation”.

Highlights

Evidence-based practice, a term often used when teachers’ pedagogy is informed by evidence that is “‘objective’, externally generated and largely quantified in form” (Mockler & Stacey, 2021, p. 170) continues to expand as the dominant paradigm in education policy and practice (Crawford & Tan, 2019)
Australia has recently established the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), informed by the Productivity Commission’s report (2016) which recommended that randomised controlled trials be adopted as the gold standard for education research
This is a crucial moment for Australia, and other nations making similar moves, to explore what the term “evidence-based” might mean, critically reflect on how it has been translated from medicine and identify how the concept discursively positions teachers

Summary

Introduction

Evidence-based practice, a term often used when teachers’ pedagogy is informed by evidence that is “‘objective’, externally generated and largely quantified in form” (Mockler & Stacey, 2021, p. 170) continues to expand as the dominant paradigm in education policy and practice (Crawford & Tan, 2019). Lucinda lectures in a unit titled “Culture, Diversity and Participation in Education”, offered to pre-service teachers at Deakin University She experiences an ongoing tension between students’ desire for templates or “tips and tricks” for “dealing” with diverse students and the ethos of the unit, which is to critique this approach and consider disability and other diversity as intersectional and uniquely experienced by individuals, with whom teachers need to engage. The discursive constraints of the use of the word “clinical” in education (McKnight & Morgan, 2020) In this stage of our project, we adopt a comparative analytical approach to explore similarities and contrasts between our disciplines’ invocations of evidence-based practice in two comparable texts. We acknowledge that our patients and students bring unique combinations of race, age, class and gender to our encounters

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion