In the last 15 years or more, there has been a significant shift towards what has been called “evidence-based education” (EBE). While the phrase may seem benign – after all, who would want to base practice on anything other than evidence – proponents often appear to accept only particular meanings for the term “evidence”. A strict, fixed hierarchy of more or less acceptable study designs places randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and meta-analyses of these at the top as a “gold standard”. Figure 1 illustrates the growth in the proportion of reports of RCTs and meta-analyses; their centrality to policy decisions is illustrated by the fact that the US What Works Clearinghouse for education research, which describes itself as a “resource to help you make evidence-based decisions”, only endorses RCT designs. In the UK context, Coe (2004) equates “evidence based” with RCTs and their derivatives. This appears to support Sampson’s (2010) argument that “evidence” is often taken exclusively to mean the results of experimental designs. Of course, many have a more nuanced view: Davies (1999), often cited as one of the papers most influential in the establishment of “evidence-based education”, explains at length the need to tie research method to research question. That is, there are no fixed hierarchies of evidence. Instead, Davies argues that evaluations comparing interventions on well-defined outcomes may be best undertaken with RCTs and quasi-experimental designs, but that questions about processes, meanings, and consequences will need other methods, such as surveys, observations, ethnographies, and interviews. However, governments are increasingly encouraging or requiring policymakers and schools to use the more restricted notion of “evidence” to direct decision making. As part of the No Child Left Behind Act, the US congress mandated the use of a restricted set of research designs for most education research grant schemes; in the UK, government encourages the use of Education Endowment Foundation evaluation tools (grounded in RCT design principles) for schools accessing over £2bn of funding to support the learning of disadvantaged pupils. An examination of the funding recently provided by the main sponsors of education research in the UK suggests around 90% of mainstream resource is directed at RCTs. In this context, it is important to critically explore the evidential basis of “evidence-based education”. There have been critical perspectives on EBE approaches before. For example, Biesta (2007) argued that the focus on particular forms of evidence narrows policy making down almost exclusively to questions about effectiveness; Eacott (2017) argued that there has been a lack of criticality, particularly of key works and key figures in the EBE movement; and Shahjahan (2011) argued that the EBE movement can be placed within a particular colonial discourse. A key argument has been that the often cited analogy with medicine is fundamentally flawed (e.g., Hammersley, 2005), and, moreover, that within medicine this rigid notion of a fixed “gold standard” research method is increasingly questioned. While provided certain strong assumptions are met, RCTs and meta-analysis may have a role in deciding if one intervention is better than another on reducing stomach ulcers, when one looks at producing public

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“循证教育”的证据基础：特刊介绍

在过去的15年或更长的时间里，已经发生了显着的转变，即所谓的“循证教育”。尽管该短语看起来似乎是良性的，但毕竟毕竟是谁想要以除证据以外的其他事物为基础的实践，但支持者常常似乎只接受“证据”一词的特殊含义。严格，固定或多或少可接受的研究设计层次结构将随机对照试验（RCT）和荟萃分析作为“黄金标准”置于最上方。图1说明了RCT和荟萃分析报告比例的增长；它们在政策决策中的中心地位体现在以下事实：美国教育研究工作交流中心（WHAT）将其描述为“可帮助您做出循证决策的资源”，仅认可RCT设计。在英国，Coe（2004）将“基于证据”等同于RCT及其衍生词。这似乎支持桑普森（Sampson，2010）的论点，即“证据”通常仅用来表示实验设计的结果。当然，许多人的观点更为细微：戴维斯（Davies（1999），通常被认为是建立“循证教育”最有影响力的论文之一，详细解释了将研究方法与研究问题联系起来的必要性。也就是说，没有固定的证据层次。相反，戴维斯认为，最好采用随机对照试验和准实验设计来进行比较评估明确结果干预措施的评估，但是有关流程，含义和后果的问题将需要其他方法，例如调查，观察，人种志和访谈。然而，政府越来越鼓励或要求决策者和学校使用更为严格的“证据”概念来指导决策。作为“不让任何孩子落后”法案的一部分，美国国会要求大多数教育研究资助计划必须使用一组受限的研究设计；在英国，政府鼓励学校使用教育捐赠基金会评估工具（以RCT设计原则为基础），以获取超过20亿英镑的资金以支持弱势学生的学习。对英国教育研究主要赞助者最近提供的资金进行的调查显示，大约90％的主流资源都用于RCT。在这种情况下，重要的是批判性地探索“循证教育”的证据基础。以前，对于EBE方法已经有了批判性的观点。例如，比耶斯塔（Biesta，2007）认为，将重点放在特定形式的证据上会使政策制定几乎只限于有效性方面。Eacott（2017）认为缺乏批判性，尤其是在EBE运动中的关键作品和关键人物方面。Shahjahan和Shahjahan（2011）认为EBE运动可以放在特定的殖民话语中。一个关键的论点是，经常被引用的与医学的类比从根本上是有缺陷的（例如，Hammersley，2005年），此外，在医学中，对固定的“金本位”研究方法的这种僵化观念越来越受到质疑。在满足某些严格假设的前提下，