Everyone, it seems, has a “fix” for education. The government has staked improvement on extra funding while others say a higher bar for teaching graduates is needed, and some view the prestige of the profession as the core issue.
Meanwhile, the federal opposition is touting free online learning as a way to reduce the costs of higher education and the government has slashed over A$2 billion from the higher education budget to pay for their school funding reforms.
These solutions and cuts all share common assumptions; that our education systems can be improved or made more efficient with relatively straightforward policy changes.
Of course, the right policy settings and sufficient resources are important, but there is no one formula for an education system just as there’s no one formula to perfect learning or teaching.
A brainy formula
What is being asked of teachers at all levels of education in the 21st century is no mean feat. In what is an increasingly complex social and technological environment, be it the physical or virtual classroom, teachers are charged with making lasting and positive changes to the most complicated piece of machinery in the known universe, the human brain.
This task is made all the more difficult in that a history of practice-based research has failed to provide simple formula for ensuring students learn what they need to learn. Even if such formulae did exist, technology is changing the landscape constantly meaning they would soon be out-dated.
Scientist, writer and medical practitioner Ben Goldacre, who is noted for his strong stance on rigorous scientific evidence, recently called on the British Department of Education to foster an evidence-based approach to teaching. In his discussion paper, Goldacre argues that the randomised control trial should be a central feature of educational research in much the same way as it is in medicine.
These trials work by treating randomly selected people with different clinical interventions to see what works best.
Goldacre is not the first to make this argument. In the early 2000s in the United States, there was a concerted push into what became known as the “what works” agenda as part of the “No Child Left Behind” policy. The basis of this agenda was that rigorous scientific evidence, gained predominantly from methods such as randomised control trials should underpin teaching practice.
In a similar vein, a committee set up by the Prime Minister’s Science Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC) reported in 2009 that there are significant and exciting opportunities to be gained by incorporating the learning sciences and neuroscience into education.
Although this committee stopped short of recommending the use of randomised control trials in the manner Goldacre has, what can be gleaned from their conclusions is the same: education is not informed by rigorous scientific evidence and it should be if we are to see meaningful improvement.
While there are without doubt great opportunities for relying on more rigorous approaches to better help our teachers do what they need to do, the randomised control trial will not achieve this in isolation any more than a quick policy change will.
Nor can the learning sciences be easily adapted so that we can produce the magic learning formula or algorithm for ensuring all students meet specified standards.
The problem here is that rigour does not necessarily mean relevance. The context in which a school or university exists is itself complex in terms of socio-economics, availability of resources, student diversity and teacher capacity and capability, making it difficult to experimentally control. These contextual factors introduce too much noise to make any meaningful comparisons between “treatment” and “control” conditions.
As Goldacre succinctly argues, the challenge for the teaching profession is to become more about evidence-based practice. This requires investment in determining not just what works but what works in every educational context for every student.
Asking universities to rapidly become more efficient or throwing large sums of additional money at schools do not guarantee improved educational outcomes. Teachers need the most up to date, cutting edge practices and tools at their disposal and need to be shown how to use them properly in their classroom.
In short, teachers need the type of evidence ecosystem of multiple academic disciplines and professional development opportunities that are available to medical practitioners. Goldacre is right that improving education requires a greater emphasis on rigour and evidence, particularly as technology plays a greater role, but that is only part of the solution.
The real problem
The greatest hurdle in improving education is bridging the gap between rigour and relevance. The only way to give teachers the tools and knowledge they need is for learning scientists, neuroscientists, educational psychologists, instructional designers and teachers to all work together to solve pedagogical problems and enhance education.
Governments also need to have the foresight to invest in this type of research and not just expect simple answers to be provided by quick policy fixes.
Enhancing education is a complex, wicked problem because learning and teaching are multifaceted phenomena, involving biological, technological, psychological, social, economic and pedagogical factors.
Solving the problem of enhancing learning for our students is not to be found by altering one part of this equation by, for example, shifting large sums from one level of education to another, but by taking a multifaceted, multidisciplinary evidence-based approach.
Sadly, the capacity for our institutions to be developing the required evidence base is being further eroded as continuing cuts and political posturing bite.