Focusing on the need for evidence-based improvements to education, this text will prove insightful to policy markers and education professionals looking for new ways to approach local, regional and national policy.
Improving education: a triumph of hope over experience
Synopsis
Advocating a more ‘scientific approach’ to monitoring improvements in education, this text of Professor Coe’s inaugural lecture covers a range of arguments for the introduction of more evidence-based policy and practice when debating how to achieve the best education for pupils.
Coe argues that a robust approach to policy around improving education needs to account for four key factors: it needs to be clear about the type of learning schools, teachers and wider society values; it needs to better evaluate, and measure, teaching quality; it needs to invest in high-quality professional development; and it needs to evaluate robustly the impact of changes teachers make.
The fourth and final approach, Coe argues, is 'non-negotiable', concluding that evidence-based reflection is the one key factor that is still missing in current education policy, and the one it would benefit from most.