Over recent decades, considerable effort has been directed towards strengthening the evidence base on what works in education, and some progress has been made in identifying programmes and approaches with demonstrated effects. However, far less is known about how such evidence is taken up, adapted, and used in practice and policy, or what difference evidence use itself makes. This paper synthesises findings from a large-scale systematic review examining existing research on how evidence is put into use in education and across wider areas of public policy. The review examined 323 relevant studies and assessed their quality and contribution. Only 33 studies were judged to be of sufficient design and rigour to support causal claims about evidence use, and only a small subset of these focused on education. Despite gradual improvements in research on effective educational interventions, robust evidence on how to support the use of such findings remains limited. The reviewed studies were analysed in relation to key dimensions of evidence use, including changes in users’ knowledge and behaviour, impacts on outcomes, and the ways in which evidence is modified prior to use. The review suggests that providing access to raw or lightly summarised research evidence is rarely sufficient to promote meaningful uptake, even when mediated by knowledge brokers or short-term training. More promising approaches involve actively engineering evidence into usable formats, delivering it through trusted and iterative channels, or engaging users directly in the research process. Overall, the findings highlight a substantial gap between the production of educational research and its effective use, underscoring the need for more rigorous studies on evidence-into-use and providing a conceptual foundation for subsequent empirical work.

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