A new article in Nature Springer

The article "World-wide barriers and enablers to Achieving evidence-informed practice in education: what can be learned from Spain, England, the United States, and Germany?" , Jointly developed by Georgeta Ion, Joel R. Malin, Chris Brown, Isabell Van Acker, Nina Bremm, Ruth Luzmore, Jane Flood and Gul Muhammad Rind, discusses the existence of a global drive to strengthen the connections between research and practice in education.

Fostering evidence-based practice (EBP) has proven challenging. In fact, this "problem" requires simultaneously addressing multiple aspects / levels of education systems and the contexts in which they reside. As such, benchmarking using systems approaches has the potential to gain context-specific insights on how to promote PEI. However, these analyzes have been sparse, and the research that exists has generally been limited in terms of methods and theory.

With this in mind, the present study executes and describes / reflects on a new approach to analyze and compare EIP in systems. In this study, educators' evidence use patterns are described and comparatively analyzed, using a sample of four regions in high-income national settings: Catalonia (Spain), England (UK), Massachusetts (USA). and Rheinland-Pfalz (Germany). This study uses a dual analytical framework (a cohesion / regulation matrix and institutional theory) to provide a methodological lens through which the EIP can be understood within and through these four systems. Taken together, this approach not only provides a way to account for macro-level differences between contexts, but also allows a comparison of meso-level and micro-level factors (using institutional theory) that might be common and different between systems. .

The findings of this study reveal substantial diversity in the extent and nature of the use of evidence across systems, which in turn are shaped according to distinctive cultural, systemic, and institutional features. Bearing these conclusions in mind, the discussion of this study advances some provisional ideas and reflections on the real and potential PIE to education. For example, the variability relative to the types / areas of accountability pressures, and how this affected educators' use of data and evidence, allowed for a debate that was relevant to policy makers. Process-related statistics are also shared, that is, they describe the progress and challenges that have been experienced in undertaking this new approach. These points are relevant to colleagues who want to emulate and improve the efforts outlined here, applicable both within and outside the education sector. In relation to education, these approaches can be applied and improved with the aim of developing context-specific packages (one-size-fits-all) to promote EIP and ultimately achieve high quality and progressively improve schools / systems.

To access the publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00587-8