The Case for Pragmatic Evidence-Based Higher Education: A Useful Way Forward?

Abstract

Arguments for and against the idea of evidence-based education have occupied the academic literature for decades. Those arguing in favor plead for greater rigor and clarity to determine “what works.” Those arguing against protest that education is a complex, social endeavor and that for epistemological, theoretical and political reasons it is not possible to state, with any useful degree of generalizable certainty, “what works.” While academics argue, policy and practice in Higher Education are beset with problems. Ineffective methods such as “Learning Styles” persist. Teaching quality and teacher performance are measured using subjective and potentially biased feedback. University educators have limited access to professional development, particularly for practical teaching skills. There is a huge volume of higher education research, but it is disconnected from educational practice. Change is needed. We propose a pragmatic model of Evidence-Based Higher Education, empowering educators and others to make judgements about the application of the most useful evidence, in a particular context, including pragmatic considerations of cost and other resources. Implications of the model include a need to emphasize pragmatic approaches to research in higher education, delivering results that are more obviously useful, and a pragmatic focus on practical teaching skills for the development of educators in Higher Education.

Relationship between Learning Style and Academic Performance among the Generation Z Students in Kuala Lumpur

“…Visual learning tactics not only promote critical thinking skills such as evaluating, analyzing, and interpreting data, but they also improve concentration and decision-making abilities. The auditory learners are mostly served by passive learning strategies such as lectures [21,22]. In this study, the percentage of auditory learners was lower than that of visual and kinesthetic learners, but higher than that of visual and kinesthetic learners.…”

Evidence-based education: Objections and future directions

“…While reviewing higher education practices, Newton et al (2020) describe how, even today, ineffective teaching practices and subjective student evaluations persist. The opposite of EBE is not RCT-free educational evidence, but practice based on no evidence at all, or a wrong application or interpretation of evidence.…”

“…These types of student evaluations can be targeted at anything, and could, potentially, have research value. Potentially, they rarely stand up to scholarly standards (Newton et al, 2020). They are rarely designed with the scientific rigor that the students who fill them out have to 1 day adhere to.…”

The Learning Styles Neuromyth Is Still Thriving in Medical Education

“…Spread the word. Advocate for teacher development sessions where fellow educators are taught about effective approaches to Learning and Teaching ( Newton et al, 2020 ), and maybe gently, constructively, kindly, steer your peers in a different direction when they propose the use of Learning Styles.…”

“…We know that the use of practice tests and other strategies that promote retrieval from long-term memory are very effective when studying clinically related topics ( Dobson et al, 2017 , 2018 ) and their use is associated with improved performance on clinical licensing exams ( Deng et al, 2015 ). Unfortunately there is often a disconnect between good research evidence, policy and practice in Higher Education ( Newton et al, 2020 ), and in particular, a gap between the neuroscience of learning, and educational practice ( Howard-Jones, 2014 ).…”