When Evidence Doesn’t Work (Editorial)
I was listening intently to a discussion on the radio recently between Newfoundland and Labrador’s Minister of Education and aprofessor from Memorial University’s Math Department. They were debating the efficacy of the math curriculum in the province’s school system. As a parent of a grade 3 student...
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fttriple:oai:gotriple.eu:oai:doaj.org/article:b77284be19df4f5888e71219c8f54980 2023-05-15T17:22:59+02:00 When Evidence Doesn’t Work (Editorial) Lindsay Glynn 2007-12-01 https://doaj.org/article/b77284be19df4f5888e71219c8f54980 en eng University of Alberta 1715-720X https://doaj.org/article/b77284be19df4f5888e71219c8f54980 undefined Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, Vol 2, Iss 4, Pp 1-3 (2007) edu info Journal Article https://vocabularies.coar-repositories.org/resource_types/c_6501/ 2007 fttriple 2023-01-22T19:28:13Z I was listening intently to a discussion on the radio recently between Newfoundland and Labrador’s Minister of Education and aprofessor from Memorial University’s Math Department. They were debating the efficacy of the math curriculum in the province’s school system. As a parent of a grade 3 student, I have my own thoughts on how the curriculum is affecting kids’ math skills (and their anxiety levels, but let’s not go there). The professor echoed the concern that parents, teachers and students have been expressing: quite simply, it’s not working. Far too many children are failing math and are struggling with the both the content and pace of the required modules. Why am I telling you this? One particular comment made by the Minister of Education struck me. She said that there was evidence to suggest that this curriculum should work. While I’m always delighted to see the evidence based practice model being used, particularly for the betterment of my kids’education, it is dismaying to see that it is not always applied well. In this particular case, evidence was collected from somewhere and a decision was made to implement a new math curriculum based on the gathered evidence. Assuming that this truly was good evidence upon which to base such a decision, then I would have to concede that the appropriate steps were taken up until that point. Unfortunately, it appears that the entire process stopped there. As we know, one of the most important components of a thorough ebp‐based implementation is an internal evaluation. What might work somewhere else is not guaranteed to work in another environment, and it is essential to determine why an implementation or intervention worked or didn’t work. It would seem, in this case, that formal evaluations of the effectiveness of the new math curriculum have not been performed and therefore, the powers that be rely solely on the fact that it worked somewhere else. This is not evidence based practice at its finest.So, what happens when evidence doesn’t work? We try to figure out why ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Newfoundland Unknown |
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I was listening intently to a discussion on the radio recently between Newfoundland and Labrador’s Minister of Education and aprofessor from Memorial University’s Math Department. They were debating the efficacy of the math curriculum in the province’s school system. As a parent of a grade 3 student, I have my own thoughts on how the curriculum is affecting kids’ math skills (and their anxiety levels, but let’s not go there). The professor echoed the concern that parents, teachers and students have been expressing: quite simply, it’s not working. Far too many children are failing math and are struggling with the both the content and pace of the required modules. Why am I telling you this? One particular comment made by the Minister of Education struck me. She said that there was evidence to suggest that this curriculum should work. While I’m always delighted to see the evidence based practice model being used, particularly for the betterment of my kids’education, it is dismaying to see that it is not always applied well. In this particular case, evidence was collected from somewhere and a decision was made to implement a new math curriculum based on the gathered evidence. Assuming that this truly was good evidence upon which to base such a decision, then I would have to concede that the appropriate steps were taken up until that point. Unfortunately, it appears that the entire process stopped there. As we know, one of the most important components of a thorough ebp‐based implementation is an internal evaluation. What might work somewhere else is not guaranteed to work in another environment, and it is essential to determine why an implementation or intervention worked or didn’t work. It would seem, in this case, that formal evaluations of the effectiveness of the new math curriculum have not been performed and therefore, the powers that be rely solely on the fact that it worked somewhere else. This is not evidence based practice at its finest.So, what happens when evidence doesn’t work? We try to figure out why ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Lindsay Glynn |
author_facet |
Lindsay Glynn |
author_sort |
Lindsay Glynn |
title |
When Evidence Doesn’t Work (Editorial) |
title_short |
When Evidence Doesn’t Work (Editorial) |
title_full |
When Evidence Doesn’t Work (Editorial) |
title_fullStr |
When Evidence Doesn’t Work (Editorial) |
title_full_unstemmed |
When Evidence Doesn’t Work (Editorial) |
title_sort |
when evidence doesn’t work (editorial) |
publisher |
University of Alberta |
publishDate |
2007 |
url |
https://doaj.org/article/b77284be19df4f5888e71219c8f54980 |
genre |
Newfoundland |
genre_facet |
Newfoundland |
op_source |
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, Vol 2, Iss 4, Pp 1-3 (2007) |
op_relation |
1715-720X https://doaj.org/article/b77284be19df4f5888e71219c8f54980 |
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