The presentation traces a development in Denmark from a situation where ‘twenty years ago, no one spoke of evidence in educational contexts’ (Rømer 2014:109) and describes his surprise when, in 2005, a visiting research warned of a coming invasion from US health research into Danish education research and practice. The seemingly benign establishment of a ‘clearing house’ for educational research became a Trojan Horse for new paradigms ‘where evidence-based research… was collected and assessed on the basis of the quality of its data’ Rømer 2014:110). The presentation raises fundamental questions about the concept of ‘evidence-based education’. It argues that there is a contradiction between evidence and education, which is only resolved by hollowing out what education means. Education is fundamentally ‘impure’, involving complex relations between method, subject matter, aims and culture. Bildung or dannelse, in our days, must promote the active and unpredictable engagement of young people, with their messy lives, with floating signifiers such as ‘citizenship’, ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘democracy’. The search for ‘evidence’ for the effectiveness of particular teaching methods requires that the method be described as independently of context, content and purpose as possible. In the process of being quantified, the goals and aims of education are replaced by measures such as PISA rankings or school completion rates. Educational processes thus lose their connection with culture, and the discourse loses connection with a broad, historical and cultural dialogue about knowledge. Practice is reduced to the simple application of evidence-based rules, and educational research becomes technicist. Despite the claims of EBT advocates, it is less than scientific: science asks “what is going on?”, not merely “what works?” The political background and significance of this change is a reframing of education from the ‘formation of the individual as a citizen or a member of a democracy’ to ‘instruction of the pupil as a “soldier” in the competition among nations.’ (Pedersen 2011:172). Rather than learning being made more ‘visible’ (Hattie 2009), issues which may be critical for our future are made invisible by removal from the agenda. The new instrumentalism places our futures at great risk: as Schmidt (1987:119) argued, the most important thing is not ‘to watch what we argue about, but to look for what we do not argue about… which discussions are not really present’.

Hattie, J (2009) Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge Pedersen, O (2011) Konkurrencestaten. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag Rømer, T (2014) The relationship between education and evidence. In K Petersen, D Reimer and A Qvortrup (eds) Evidence and evidence-based education in Denmark: The current debate. Cursiv no 14, Department of Education, Aarhus University http://edu.au.dk/cursiv (accessed 24 August 2018) Schmidt, L-H (1987) At tænke på de aktuelle Grænser. Slagmark, 9, 112-121