ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors examine evidence-based practice and the importance of being able to be a smart, critical consumer of evidence. They also consider why evidence-based practice might be a special concern for rural classrooms and how practice-based evidence, that is, evaluating whether our teaching practices are effective for our students and our goals in our context, can help the teacher be a more effective teacher. Many research-supported practices, such as reading to promote vocabulary learning and writing to promote reading comprehension, do work with all students regardless of context. Practice-based evidence gives the teacher an opportunity to figure out which students might not succeed when their use a particular practice, to try and figure out why that may be, and then to adapt our teaching. This is the key difference between evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence.
