EVIDENCE, POLICY AND PRACTICE

1
EVIDENCE, POLICY AND PRACTICE

• Based on observations from 3 EC/EUN projects
  THINK AGAIN, ERNIST P2P
• David Wood

2
Evidence-based policy and Policy-based evidence

• Attacks on the quality of educational research
• Non-cumulative and doctrinaire
• Failure to replicate
• Failure to scale-up to a systemic level
• Lack of evidence for generalisation
• No evidence for sustainability

3
Some policy reactions

• Greater stakeholder participation in setting
  the research agenda and evaluating the outcomes
• Prescribed gold standard to govern allocation
  of research funding
• Capacity building in quantitative methods
• Criteria for meta-analysis and review to identify
  safe evidence

4
Researching the impacts of ICT

• Views on the existing evidence base
• Curriculum aspirations and objectives
• Systems of assessment and accreditation
• Human resource development
• Organisational climate

5
Multiple constraint alignment

• A pre-condition for scaling up and
• for sustainability?
• If so, effective R and D demands systemic
• support to guarantee generalisation not just
  the application of safe knowledge
• Stakeholders as partners in collaborative R and D
  (versus users who act as consumers of safe
  knowledge)

6
RD and DR

• The notion of development-led research
• Conditions for innovation and development
• Possible strategies?
• P2P
• Learning about learning

7
Designing a new balance sheet?

• If ICT becomes mission critical, its impacts
  likely to be systemic - not restricted to
  outcomes from learners and learning
• Innovation, change and impact will depend on the
  alignment of many constraints
• Any added value could be multi-dimensional
• Look for models?
• Economist and IBM?

8
Partners in the process

• Partners in case studies
• Denmark
• France
• Hungary
• Iceland
• Netherlands
• Portugal
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• UK