that the notion is closely related to the concept of“justification”and what it is
rational to believe on the basis of evidence. Generally we would se the expression
“objectivity”for evidence-based inquiry where there is intersubjective agreement
among inquirers and the idea is that evidence thus can act as a neutral arbiter among
theories determining which we should adopt.
Rarely does this sort of easy relationship between research and policy or theory
and practice work in the real world especially in an ideological policy realm like
education. For one thing the narrow inductivist model of inquiry that assumes
evidence stands independently or prior to theory seems open to question in many
grounds. The history of recent debates going back to Thomas Kuhn is that obser-
vation is theory-laden as is evidence (Kelly 2014). What constitutes“evidence”is
often determined by the history of research practices.^1
The term“evidence-based”in research, policy and practice in education, is an
extension of evidence-based medicine, utilizing randomized controlled trials that
emerged from thefield of clinical epidemiology in the late 1980s. Introducing
“current best evidence”and“five levels of quality evidence”, including statistical
validity and risk prediction, meta-analysis, systematic review, clinical relevance,
currency, and peer-review, it was developed as a framework for public health policy
in the 1990s with the establishment of the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993 and the
Centre for Evidence Based Medicine. The same evidential model has been since
generalized and applied to other areas of public policy including education.^2
Evidence-based practice is an interdisciplinary approach, to mainly clinical
practice that originated in medicine, utilizing randomized controlled trials that
emerged from thefield of clinical epidemiology in the late 1980s, but that have
been utilized recently in psychology and education. The premise of evidence-based
practice is that all practical decisions should originate from scientific studies and
that studies are interpreted based upon standards and norms. Introducing“current
best evidence”and“five levels of quality evidence”, including statistical validity
and risk prediction, meta-analysis, systematic review, clinical relevance, currency,
and peer-review, it was developed as a framework for public health policy in the
1990s with the establishment of the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993 and the Centre
for Evidence Based Medicine. The same evidential model has since been gener-
alized and applied to other areas of public policy, including education (Bridges
et al. 2009).
The history of evidence-based policy has evolved from evidence-based medi-
cine, in which researchfindings are used to support clinical decisions, and evidence
is gathered by randomized controlled trials (RCTs). In 1993, the Cochrane
Collaboration was established in the UK. It works to keep all RCTs up-to-date, and
provides Cochrane reviews of health policy. Research and policy advocacy pushed
for more evidence-based policy-making, leading to the formation of the Campbell
(^1) Seehttp://coalition4evidence.org/468-2/publications/.
(^2) The following section draws on Peters and Tesar (2016)“Bad Research, Bad Education: The
contested evidence for evidence-based research, policy and practice in education.”
538 Part VI: Research, Institutional Evaluation and Evidence-Based Research