By Andreas Schleicher, Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Policymakers’ hunger for immediate answers is always frustrated by the snail’s pace at which the development of data, evidence and research advances. And sometimes, policymakers forget that ‘data’ is not the plural form of ‘anecdote’. Moreover, evidence based on cross-sectional data that dominate the field leaves many questions unanswered. The evidence offers a snapshot of education systems at a certain moment in time; but does not – cannot – show how the school systems got to that point, or the institutions and organisations that might have helped or hindered progress.
In addition, data do not say much about cause and effect. Correlations are often deceptive: if the birds sing when the sun rises, and they do so day after day, year after year, and in many different places around the world, it doesn’t mean the sun rises because the birds sing. In a nutshell, knowing what successful systems are doing does not yet tell us how to improve less-successful systems.
Partnerships and networks are important
We can do better, and the OECD’s work on strengthening research impact shows that there is a diverse set of actors and mechanisms that facilitate the use of evidence and research in countries. Countries also have a number of mechanisms for facilitating the use of evidence, with projects encouraging interactions between the different actors being the most common.
There is consensus that teachers’ and policymakers’ involvement in research can make research more relevant and reinforce its use.
However, countries also report various barriers to using research systematically in policy and practice. The lack of time to access and engage with evidence is a shared challenge. Barriers are commonly linked to the absence of appropriate structures and mechanisms. Insufficient accessibility of evidence due to inappropriate or inconvenient formats means that user-friendliness is also a problem in many systems. Co-producing evidence is a promising avenue, but evidence is still weak on what good research-practice-policy engagement looks like.
There is consensus that teachers’ and policymakers’ involvement in research can make research more relevant and reinforce its use. More research is needed to understand how exactly engagement works in research co-production and what the necessary ingredients are for its success.
Simply connecting people is not enough – to activate the whole system for the co-production and use of evidence requires system-level coordination.
It is also important to build relationships between the users and producers of evidence through partnerships and networks. But simply connecting people is not enough. Strategic leadership, and appropriate incentives and funding mechanisms are needed to enable a systems approach to the use of evidence.
High-quality research-policy-practice engagement
To activate the whole system for the co-production and use of evidence requires system-level coordination. At a minimum, three elements are necessary. Strategic leadership – both at the level of each initiative and at the level of the system – should be based on a well-developed theory of change. Practitioners, policymakers and researchers need incentives for engaging thoughtfully in and with evidence.
Notably, traditional academic incentives are a major obstacle for researchers to engage with practitioners and policymakers more deeply. Funding mechanisms need to be aligned with the needs of high-quality research-policy-practice engagement. Funding needs to recognise the time it takes to create trusting relationships. It should also recognise the importance of capacity building, rewarding skills and incentivising outputs that serve the needs of research users and, ultimately, beneficiaries.
Peer learning
There is immense potential for peer learning in this field if contexts, actors and sectors are more connected. Potential for peer learning is threefold. First, learning from other contexts: Discussions on the use of evidence in education tend to focus either on the context of policy, or practice. Evidence-informed policy and practice have developed in parallel but developments have not been systematically translated from one context to the other. Second, learning from other countries: The diversity of the research production and use landscape provides fertile ground for sharing good and bad practices, and exploring what works and how. Third, learning from other sectors: Research and experience have accumulated in a number of sectors, including health, environment, agriculture and fields of social science. Learning more from these sectors could benefit education. Platforms for mutual learning will contribute to developing a more robust knowledge base in the field.
Research on “What works in what works” has become a vibrant field of study in recent years but it has not, as yet, yielded enough robust evidence. The systematic investigation and evaluation of existing efforts to reinforce the impact of evidence are critical to improving such efforts. Yet, such evaluations to date have been scarce.
For research mobilisation initiatives to become evidence-informed themselves, we need to better understand what makes them successful in generating high-quality research and reinforcing its use.
Andreas Schleicher is Director for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the OECD in Paris. He initiated and oversees the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other international instruments that have created a global platform for policy-makers, researchers and educators across nations and cultures to innovate and transform educational policies and practices.