Content area
Full text
Stud Philos Educ (2010) 29:491503
DOI 10.1007/s11217-010-9191-x
Gert J. J. Biesta
Published online: 9 July 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract The idea that professional practices such as education should be based upon or at least be informed by evidence continues to capture the imagination of many politicians, policy makers, practitioners and researchers. There is growing evidence of the inuence of this line of thought. At the same time there is a growing body of work that has raised fundamental questions about the feasibility of the idea of evidence-based or evidence-informed practice. In this paper I make a further contribution to this discussion through an analysis of a number of assumptions that inform the discussion. I focus on the epistemological, ontological and praxeological dimensions of the discussion and in each domain identify a decit. In the epistemological domain there is a knowledge decit, in the ontological domain an effectiveness or efcacy decit and in the practice domain an application decit. Taken together these decits not only raise some important questions about the very idea of evidence-based practice but also highlight the role of normativity, power and values. Against this background I outline the case for the idea of value-based education as an alternative for evidence-based education. As I am generally concerned about the expectations policy makers hold about what evidence can and should achieve in professional practices such as education, my contribution is primarily meant to provide educators and other professionals with arguments that can help them to resist unwarranted expectations about the role of evidence in their practices and even more so of unwarranted interventions in their practices.
Keywords Evidence-based education Evidence-based practice
Evidence-informed practice What works Epistemology Ontology
Praxeology Values Value-based education Power Normativity
G. J. J. Biesta (&)
The Stirling Institute of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected]
Why What Works Still Wont Work: From Evidence-Based Educationto Value-Based Education
123
492 G. J. J. Biesta
Introduction
The idea that professional practices such as education should be based upon or at least be informed by evidence has become inuential in many countries around the world (for a recent overview see Wiseman 2010). A quick scan of journal titles not only indicates the growing popularity of the idea...