ABSTRACT
Teachers make educational decisions that impact their students every day. A few of these decisions have the luxury of being evidence-based, but most are necessarily of the triage variety just to keep pace with the torrent of daily challenges. A heuristic is a practical approach that trades slow and optimal solutions for fast and good-enough solutions. The heuristic approach is common outside of education, for example in fields such as design and medicine. In this approach, practitioners focus on identifying and acquiring a set of tried-and-true practices—a “heuristic toolbox”—and then focus on mastering these tools. The heuristic toolbox is a robust and practical way to elevate evidence-based practices. Educators by their nature love to educate, and so the appeal of being first to share the latest educational research with colleagues is irresistible. But popular books that present such research have been particularly unkind to the field of education.
