On ‘evidence’ in higher education

When it comes to suggesting change in higher education practice, one of the questions often raised is “where’s the evidence in favour of this?” Not having absolute, robust proof for a new or different approach can lead to nay-sayers claiming the high-ground, and make even the open-to-change somewhat wary. It’s not that evidence isn’t important or needed; asking for evidence is a fair request! However it's helpful to consider just what evidence in higher education actually is, and how far it can take us. Discussion around evidence and higher education should really begin with one word: caveat.

Suggesting adjustment to any education practice is far from straightforward, particularly where an incumbent system is in place. David Didau has said that, regarding beliefs around teaching, “We are predisposed to fall for a comforting lie rather than wrestle with an inconvenient truth. And we tend to be comforted by what's familiar rather than what makes logical sense...” (What if everything you knew about education was wrong?, 2015, p.21).  Education is a specific example of where most of us act on intuition, and project our own experience and expectations into what we believe ought to be. Here are a few important caveats for considering education practice evidence.  

• First, education practice presents a ‘wicked problem’. There is no such thing as perfect. There is interdependence across complex variables; difficulties of definition and description; no objective ‘true’ or ‘false’ across potential solutions; and no universal understanding of what perfect education might resemble. Each of these is indicative of wickedness. So, even if evidence for a particular approach were available, it would not likely suggest any perfect practice that all would be unanimous on. Granularity of wickedness should be considered here: for example, we might all agree that student feedback is a necessary component of education however evidence would not tell us exactly how to implement. There is always room for doubt and counter-point. 
• Second, there are difficulties around what constitutes effective evidence. Three considerations here. One, evidence is always historical by nature; any lessons and practice that might be cited to substantiate a teaching practice must already exist. Forward-thinking and novel possibilities, then, must be evidenced circumstantially or by extension. Second, evidence is also necessarily contextual and not always easy to transfer or scale (more on this below). Three, evidence is not the same as proof. Though evidence and proof might look the same on the surface (and be suggested as synonyms), evidence is more indicative, and proof more conclusive. There is little conclusive to higher education practice.
• Third, unless fundamentally flawed, an incumbent practice has the advantage in that it is given the benefit of the doubt (and is also likely already catered for in terms of task and support systems). In other words, incumbent practices are frequently more comfortable and harder to shift from than they ought to be. The burden of proof is often on a proposal for change to demonstrate its benefits over the incumbent, rather than the other way around (as the quotation from Didau cited above suggests). We tend to place more confidence in what we have experienced, and approach new and different ideas with more suspicion than they are due. 
• Fourth, coming back to the point about evidence being contextual and the point above about incumbent practice being hard to shift, new practice must always fit within a system of existing practice. Evidence of something working well in one situation does not mean it is an easy or even desirable lift and shift to another. There is an interdependence to education practice, such that even trials might not be helpful (the context of the trial may negate the benefits). Related to this, a new approach ought to be given time to settle. A new proposal might not be an immediate success, as there may be contextual factors that require fine-tuning of an approach. It’s unrealistic to suggest that all will go smoothly from the outset.

So, how to handle calls for evidence? In addition to pointing out the caveats above, it is useful to flip the question: What is the evidence that current approaches are optimal? More constructively, it’s good to research and draw as much from literature as possible. Circumstantial evidence is often the best available and will often lead to an improved proposal. The solution to a lack of perfect evidence isn’t best guess!