ABSTRACT

The Trials of Evidence-based Education explores the promise, limitations and achievements of evidence-based policy and practice, as the attention of funders moves from a sole focus on attainment outcomes to political concern about character-building and wider educational impacts.
 
Providing a detailed look at the pros, cons and areas for improvement in evidence-based policy and practice, this book includes consideration of the following:

  • What is involved in a robust evaluation for education.
  • The issues in conducting trials and how to assess the trustworthiness of research findings.
  • New methods for the design, conduct, analysis and use of evidence from trials and examining their implications.
  • What policy-makers, head teachers and practitioners can learn from the evidence to inform practice.

In this well-structured and thoughtful text, the results and implications of over 20 studies conducted by the authors are combined with a much larger number of studies from their systematic reviews, and the implications are spelled out for the research community, policy-makers, schools wanting to run their own evaluations, and for practitioners using evidence.

part I|14 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|4 pages

Introduction

The state of evidence in education

part II|38 pages

Issues in conducting trials

part III|108 pages

What do trials show?

part IV|14 pages

Conclusions