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- Vol 6 RE: Chapter 9, App D
evidence-based practiceevidence-informed practiceprofessional judgmenteducational purposesnormative judgmentdemocratic deficitcontextual evidencecausal claimsJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Biesta critiques the transfer of evidence-based medicine's “what works” logic into education.
Key ideas
Educational action is not a technical intervention with fixed ends: decisions always involve judgments about desirable purposes, relationships, and consequences. Research can inform practice by offering possibilities, explanations, and evidence about what worked under particular conditions, but it cannot determine what a teacher should do. Treating causal findings as prescriptions narrows professional judgment and hides the values embedded in definitions of effectiveness. It can also create a democratic deficit by moving decisions about educational aims from teachers, learners, and publics to researchers or policy systems.
Why it matters
For educators and leaders, the article supports evidence-informed rather than evidence-determined practice: examine the quality and relevance of evidence while keeping purposes, ethics, context, and participation open to deliberation.
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Edition abbreviations
- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
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