Internationally there has been a recent resurgence of interest in teacher education models based on evidence-based teaching.  These models take a variety of forms.  They include: clinical models of teacher education (Alter & Coggeshall 2009; Grossman 2010; NCATE 2010; Burn & Mutton 2013; Conroy, Hulme & Menter 2013; McLean-Davies et al 2013; DfE 2015a).; instructional rounds (City et al 2009) and teacher rounds (Del Prete 2013); and professional learning communities (PLCs) (e.g. Stoll et al 2006).  There is also increasing interest in translational research in teaching in schools, exploring how educational research findings can be translated into practice. 

At the same time there has been an international increase in research and theorisation of teachers’ agency in relation to professional learning, particularly across Europe (e.g  Sannino 2010; Reeves & I’Anson 2014; Pyhältö, Pietarinen & Soini 2015; Toom, Pyhältö & Rust 2015).  Questions can be asked about the relationship between evidence-based teaching and teachers’ agency, both in terms of the nature and scope of professional learning and in terms of the authority that teachers have within systems of schooling. 

Some commentators have argued that evidence-based teaching provides an important opportunity for teachers to exercise agency and enhance their authority (Goldacre 2013).  However, at the same time dissenting voices have critiqued professional development models such as instructional rounds and PLCs for focusing too narrowly on the efficient implementation of prescribed teaching techniques rather than broader social questions about schools and schooling (Servage, 2008, 2009: Bottery 2003).  Others have criticised evidence based-practice, including evidence-based teaching, for obscuring the ideological nature of decisions about social practices like teaching behind an illusion of neutrality (Kirmayer 2012; Lee, Fitzpatrick & Baik 2013; Biesta 2010). Such critiques also suggest that, rather than serving as an affordance for teachers’ agency, evidence-based teaching could provide a constraint.  This debate, in part, turns on how we define evidence-based practice and what seems to be clear is that not everybody advocating evidence-based teaching is calling for the same thing.

This paper reports on research into initial teacher education (ITE) students’ conceptions of evidence-based teaching as they near the end of their ITE courses.  The research reported here forms part of a larger project into students’ experiences and understandings of evidence-based teaching in ITE.

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