Evidence-based practice is a term that has become increasingly widely used in relation to different types of intervention therapy. The first paper in this issue is a brief report of a Cochrane Review of Auditory Verbal Therapy by Joanna White and Christopher Brennan-Jones. It highlights the challenge of evaluating interventions when randomised controlled trials, often considered to be the gold standard, are not possible, and the need to rely on other evidence.
The three other papers in this issue also address the issue of reflecting on practice, but from different perspectives. Denise Powell and Merv Hyde consider deaf education in New Zealand in their paper that asks the question where deaf education has been and where it is going and considers the many changes that have taken place, driven by changes in underlying philosophies and legislation. Then Lindsey Jones presents evidence in the form of a literature review that considers the question of developing deaf children's conceptual understanding and scientific argumentation skills. Finally, Elizabeth Levesque focuses on one young deaf child to investigate the impact of bimodal bilingual parental input on the child's communication and language development.
It is vital that as a profession we base our work on evidence and continuously reflect on our own practice, being willing to adapt it when new evidence becomes available. Whilst large-scale studies are challenging, nevertheless evidence begins to mount as smaller studies, often with particular groups, show similar results.
Linda M Watson
P Margaret Brown
Editors