No abstract

Education policymaking is crucial in preparing children to meet future societal challenges. However, policymaking is never straightforward. And the educational policymaking landscape in post-pandemic Canada includes complexities that make evidence-based decision-making particularly difficult. These factors include: the baseline systemic oppression embedded in Canada’s education systems; the tension between the importance of public opinion and the public’s imagined expertise; the inter-disciplinary nature of the field of education research; the challenge of quantifying education outcomes and the simple messages numbers can carry; and the long time-horizons in education payoffs compared to myopic tendencies in politics. Added to these factors is the rise of conspiracy theories and anti-truth sentiment, which undermines trust in expertise, and this sentiment often carries logics of white supremacy and colonialism. This paper identifies these factors in the hopes that policymakers and researchers do not underestimate the difficulty or importance of bringing about evidence-based policy in education settings.