The role of evidence in teaching practice from the point of view of the main actors

The relationship between research and educational practice has a significant influence on the development of the teaching-learning process. Understanding the role that evidence plays in teaching practice is essential to grasp the current state of education and to design improvement scenarios driven by scientific evidence.
With the aim of delving into the relationship between scientific evidence and educational practices, on the one hand, and teachers’ perceptions of the use of evidence, on the other, a quantitative study was conducted through surveys administered to 462 teachers from schools in Barcelona and the Community of Madrid.
The results highlight the importance that teachers assign to evidence and the characteristics that scientific evidence must have in order to have a direct impact on teaching practice: relevance, affordability, accessibility, and practicality. Teachers place particular value on the experiences of their own or others’ educational practices over theoretical knowledge. Furthermore, we can observe how variables such as age, gender, educational level, the stage of education in which they teach, and the ownership of the school influence teachers’ perceptions of the relationship between scientific evidence and their educational practice. We conclude that these results enable key progress in the roadmap toward a culture of evidence-based practices in education and promote deep reflection on how research and its findings effectively reach teachers.