š Whatās good āevidence-basedā practice for classrooms? We asked the teachers, hereās what they said
We believe teachers should be heard more clearly in the conversations about evidence; policy makers and other decision-makers need to listen to teachers. The type of evidence that teachers want and can use should be basic to any plan around āevidence-basedā or āevidence-informedā teaching in Australian schools.
Meghan Stacey and Nicole Mockler share some of their finding associated with what evidence teachers value in the classroom. This is in contrast to external meta research.
This article doesn’t go into a lot of detail but it does raise a core issue in our (or any!) profession: what counts as good evidence? “Too often, calls for āevidence-based practiceā in education ignore the evidence that really counts,” write the authors. “Narrow definitions of evidence where it is linked to external testing are highly problematic.” Looking at what teachers actually value as evidence in their practice, we see things like teachers’ own classroom observations ranked at the top of the list and standardized test results (such as Australia’s NAPLAN) at the bottom. So how do we support teachers with evidence? From where I sit, it seems to me that support helping teachers create their own assessments would best address the need. If teachers depend on their own observations, let’s help make sure those observations are good ones. Via Aaron Davis.