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3 references
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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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- Vol 6 RE: Chapter 4
qualificationsocialisationsubjectificationeducational purposeseducational qualitymeasurement cultureteacher judgmentdemocratic deliberationBook Evidence summaryAt a glance
Biesta argues that a culture of measurement can displace the more fundamental question of what education is for.
Key ideas
Data about outcomes do not by themselves establish educational quality because decisions about valued outcomes are ethical, political, and democratic. He distinguishes three overlapping functions: qualification, through knowledge and capability; socialisation, through participation in traditions and practices; and subjectification, through becoming an independent person able to act and judge. Good education requires deliberation about the balance and possible tensions among these domains. The book also examines evidence, accountability, responsibility, inclusion, democracy, and teacher judgment.
Why it matters
For educators and leaders, its framework encourages asking what a metric makes visible, which purposes it serves, what it obscures, and whether measurement supports or constrains responsible professional and democratic decision making.
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- Vol 6 RE: Chapters 2, 10, 14
educational purposesprofessional judgmentmethodological reflexivityconceptual reflexivitynormative questionsresearch configurationspolitical economycausal assumptionsBook Evidence summaryAt a glance
Biesta offers an introduction organised around questions that conventional research-methods texts often leave implicit.
Key ideas
Before choosing a method, researchers must consider what education is, what improvement means, how theory functions, and how inquiry relates to professional judgment and democracy. Chapters examine pragmatism, educational practice, configurations of research, measurement, knowledge, and the political economy of academic publishing. The book resists both method-driven research and the claim that evidence can settle normative educational questions. Research becomes educational when it engages with purposes and the distinctive practical relations through which education occurs.
Why it matters
For new and experienced researchers, the text recommends methodological competence joined with conceptual and political reflexivity: clarify the educational problem, examine assumptions about causality and value, recognise institutional incentives, and ask how knowledge claims might contribute responsibly to practice without replacing democratic judgment.
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Edition abbreviations
- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
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