Against best practice: uncertainty, outliers and local studies in educational research

Abstract

Situating the quest for ‘best practice’ in education in the early ambitions of the Royal Society of London and the early history of statistics, and in insights offered by John Dewey in his 1929 Gifford and Kappa Delta Pi lectures, the paper argues for greater appreciation of the uncertainties and complexities of teaching and learning and for greater modesty in researcher claims. It contends that the quest for best practices in education needs to be tempered with the notion of better over best practice by maintaining the value of, and the need for, a greater place for outliers in research.

Keywords:

• best practice
• better practice
• educational research
• science of education
• value-added research
• uncertainty in teaching
• outliers in research
• local studies
• researcher modesty and humility
• complexity theory

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on a keynote address given at the Northern Rocky Mountain Educational Research Association meeting, October 2011, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA.