Balancing Evidence-Based and Humanistic Education in School Development for Underperforming Arizona and South Carolina Schools

ABSTRACT

Educational policies and research funding sources in many nations, including the United States, promote the use of evidence-based practice for school development, with evidence most often defined by standardized tests. Scholars and educators have engaged in debates regarding the use of evidence defined by tests and the underlying assumptions about universal knowledge and education values, particularly in increasingly culturally diverse nations like the U.S. This paper presents a school development project aimed at building leadership capacity for continuous school development that attempts to use “evidence-based” ideas from the standpoint of education values in persistently underperforming Arizona and South Carolina schools.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In Dewey’s (1916, 1939) work, he often wrote about the importance of utility yet unlike the contemporary advocates of utility and evidence-based practice, Dewey opposed the claim that ends (student outcomes on tests) and means (pedagogical activity) can be irrevocably separated from each other. Rather, he believed that ends-in-view had limited relevance or meaning until the means were available to consummate them.

2. Penn School was founded in 1862 as one of the first academic schools in the South to provide a formal education for formerly Enslaved West Africans. The school closed in 1948; however, the Historic Penn Center continues as a site to preserve the Gullah Geechee community and a site for social justice and civil rights education. Leaders of Penn Center have included Martin Luther King.