Theory and Evidence in Research on Teaching and Learning (Didactics)

Author(s):

Stefan Thomas HopmannMoritz RosenmundMartin LawnBernard SchneuwlyEwald Terhart

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Symposium

Session Information

27 SES 01, Theory and Evidence in Research on Teaching and Learning (Didactics) (Part 1)

Symposium, continues in Session 27 SES 02

Time:

2009-09-28

09:15-10:45

Room:

NIG, HS 3B

Chair:

Stefan Thomas Hopmann

Discussant:

Meinert Arnd Meyer

Contribution

The current wave of ”evidence based” policies and proposals has a direct impact on teaching, teacher education and the research dealing with schooling, curriculum and instruction. It imposes a specific kind of knowledge as parameter for the ”quality” of decision making and enactment. In most cases, there is no specific argument added on what constitutes something as ”evidence” in a given case. For instance, test results from international or national student achievement tests are taken for granted as valid indicators for the quality of the received instruction. For the public and politicians alike, just the fact that a test deals with e.g. mathematics seems sufficient as an argument that it reflects the results of a specific mathematics education as provided by the involved schools. Schools and teachers, whose students fail the test requirements, are said to be ”underperforming”, to lack sufficient knowledge, and to provide substandard education. In the aftermath, teacher education and research on teaching are supposed to figure out what needs to be done to meet the standards as reflected by test results. This holds true, even if the underlying research shows that the results only to a very limited degree can be attributed to what was going on in class-room, that social capital and capacities outside school play an important role, and that testing by nature only covers a small part of the overall curriculum. ”Evidence” in terms of policy making and school governance seems to be understood and used in specific manners, which do not necessarily reflect the scientific status and validity of the data, nor the fact that most of schooling remains outside this rather narrow concept of ”what works”. Looking e.g. at the impact of PISA results in different countries and audiences, one can see that the same data set is used for rather different, often contradictory claims of what to do next, how to change schools structures or instructional patterns. This has, of course to do, with the fact that “evidence” in complex social systems is never unequivocal, depending on quite many factors, and with different implications for different stakeholders. But how should research on learning and teaching (as the one producing “evidence”) and how should teacher education (as the most important tool to disseminate knowledge about evidence) respond to these manifold realities of “evidence”?

Method

In research and teaching the issue gets even more complicated, if one takes into account of the fact that different theories and models will produce different ways and modes of understanding knowledge about schooling. In spite of all these complexities, didactics and teacher education can’t avoid dealing with them. Teaching and instruction will be measured by some procedures; schools, teachers, and students will be held accountable for the evidence, whatever the actual frame of reference has counted as such. This makes the relation of “theory” and “evidence”, of research and action key issues for the future of the discipline. Therefore we want to address the multilayered realities of “evidence” in two workshop sessions, each focusing on specific aspects of the theory-evidence-relation based on case studies and / or a meta-analysis of recent research.

Expected Outcomes

By using different perspectives, the sessions will highlight the current state of the art and the embedded issues of the theory-evidence-relation as it pertains to the fields of teaching and learning, of research on teaching and of teacher education. The first session shall address the historical roots and the empirical construction of evidence. What is when counted by whom as relevant data, and how is the “evidence” empirically constructed? This shall be addressed by looking at recent research examples in both fields. The second session will give a closer look at the “comparative” nature of evidence in research on teaching and instruction, and put the whole issue into the perspective of how research and teacher education should deal with the construction and use of evidence claims in current schooling.

References

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Author Information

Stefan Thomas Hopmann

University of Vienna

Department of Educational Sciences

Wien

Moritz Rosenmund

Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich

Forschung und Entwicklung

Zürich

Martin Lawn

University of Edinburgh

Centre for Educational Sociology

Edinburgh

Bernard Schneuwly

University of Geneva

Department of Educational Sciences

Genève

Ewald Terhart

University of Münster

Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft

Münster

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