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

The movement towards ‘evidence based’ policy and practice has raised, again, important questions about the extent to which policy can be derived from research and about the kind of evidence which should inform policy. Evidence-Based Education Policy begins with a critique of the narrower conceptions of the evidence which might inform policy, espoused by the ‘what works’ movement among others, and then examines some of the logical and other kinds of gaps between what can be shown by research and the wider political requirements of policy. The book then examines the claims of some different educational research traditions to inform policy: large population studies as well as individual case studies; personal narratives; action research; philosophy; and imaginative, even romantic, literature. It calls for a more subtle understanding of the ways in which different forms of enquiry may inform policy and practice, and for the recognition and utilisation of the insights offered by the rich variety of educational research traditions available to us.