From information architecture to evidence-based practice

@bengoldacre has produced a report for the UK Department for Education, suggesting some lessons that education can learn from medicine, and calling for a coherent “information architecture” that supports evidence based practice. Dr Goldacre notes that in the highest performing education systems, such as Singapore, “it is almost impossible to rise up the career ladder of teaching, without also doing some work on research in education.”

Here are some of his key recommendations. Clearly these recommendations would be relevant to many other corporate environments, especially those where there is strong demand for innovation, performance and value-for-money.

• a simple infrastructure that supports evidence-based practice
• teachers should be empowered to participate in research
• the results of research should be disseminated more efficiently
• resources on research should be available to teachers, enabling them to be critical and thoughtful consumers of evidence
• barriers between teachers and researchers should be removed
• teachers should be driving the research agenda, by identifying questions that need to be answered.

Clearly it is not enough merely to create an information architecture or knowledge infrastructure. The challenge is to make sure they are aligned with an inquiring culture.

to be continued ...

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Ben Goldacre, Teachers! What would evidence based practice look like? (Bad Science, March 2013)