NN39, October 2007
Best Practice in Education and Training: Hype or Hope?
Three ill-considered assumptions in ?Best Practice in Education and Training?
By Mark Mason, CERC, University of Hong Kong
Keywords?Best practice?, educational development, trans-contextual efficacy, trans-cultural normativity
Summary
This article considers three assumptions frequently associated with the claim that ?established best practice? can and should be implemented in local development contexts, with a view to encouraging those of us in the field of international educational development to tread a little more cautiously.
----
My aim in this short response to the question in ?Best Practice in Education and Training: hype or hope?? is to consider a little more critically three of the assumptions frequently associated with the claim that ?established best practice? can and should be implemented in local development contexts.
The claim assumes first that there is indeed an established best practice in education and training. In its stronger form, it would be a claim of best practice universally. That ?best practice? may frequently have been developed in ?the West? or ?the North? (depending on the metaphor one chooses), or it may have been developed in developing world contexts, say, through experience gained from one or more educational development programmes. Opponents of the ?best practice? thesis might argue that even if best practice could be established in one economic, political, social or cultural context, it is not possible for that particular ideal to have transcultural normative reach or practical traction in different contexts for the simple reason that it originated locally. In their view, only ?best practices? that originated universally, or from a ?God?s eye-view?, would have trans-contextual efficacy and normative reach ? and since there is no ?universal? origin, no ?God?s eye-view? (particularly in a world that has adopted the scepticism of the postmodern turn), no trans-contextual efficacy or normativity is possible. Defendants of the ?best practice? thesis, on the other hand, would argue that just because a particular practice or set of norms originated locally, there is no reason to believe that that practice cannot have normative and practical traction across contexts. Here the defendants of the ?best practice? thesis are right: there is no reason why we need a view from nowhere to establish a universal best practice. (I have made this argument more fully in Mason [2005]).
This debate still, however, begs the question whether there can ever be an evidence-based best practice in education and training. The frequent use of the qualifier, ?evidence-based?, employed to strengthen the claim to ?best? practice, invites consideration of a deeper question to do with the nature of knowledge: is there an epistemology or methodology in the social sciences that would enable us to inform future practice by established research outcomes? In his Preface, On the Non-Existence of Scientific Method (1983), Karl Popper famously claimed,
'As a rule, I begin my lectures on Scientific Method by telling my students that scientific method does not exist and I ought to know, having been, for a time at least, the one and only professor of this non-existent subject within the British Commonwealth ? [M]y subject does not exist because ? there are only problems, and the urge to solve them.'
In John Dewey?s pragmatic epistemology, evidence provides us not with rules for future action, but merely with hypotheses for intelligent problem solving. There is obviously a substantial epistemological argument supporting this conclusion, but the constraints of space prevent further elucidation of it here. Interested readers could consult Dewey?s (1938) Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. If, as Gert Biesta (2007, p. 17)) interprets Dewey?s conclusion,
we want an epistemology that is practical enough to understand how knowledge can support practice, we have to concede that the knowledge available through research is not about what works and will work, but about what has worked in the past.
We can, in other words, use this knowledge only to undertake further intelligent action. We cannot use it as a blueprint for ?best practice?.
Beyond these epistemological and methodological issues, there is a further question about whether there is or can ever be an established ?best practice? in education and training. The notion of a ?best practice? assumes, after all, a global or universal best. From a rather too shallow sceptical perspective, the answer to this question would be negative: this critic would claim that we would be naïve in assuming even the possibility of one ?best practice?. But such scepticism is perhaps not sufficiently well considered. It?s a bit of a cheap shot. The answer to this question should not be sought in a choice between yes and no, but is best located on a continuum, somewhere between the opposing positive and negative poles. The answer would probably tend towards the positive (i.e., yes, it is possible to identify some ideals of ?best practice?) if we were seeking ideals that were described at a fairly general level. Most would, after all, agree with the ideals, for example, that ?Best practice assumes the existence and enforcement of procedures to minimize corruption in any educational development work?, or, ?Any educational development work should aim to maximize the life chances of those most at risk in the prevailing context?, or, ?Teaching or training for learning by induction, from experiences familiar to the learner, is more likely to enhance concept formation and skills development than a deductively structured pedagogy?. These are sufficiently general claims as to be widely generalizable.
But any answer to the question whether a universally applicable set of best practices can be identified would tend towards the negative if we were seeking ideals that could be described to a high degree of specificity. What, for example, is meant by ?maximizing the life chances of those most at risk in the prevailing context?? Would it mean helping them, in a Freirean sense, to develop critical reasoning skills and a sceptical orientation to the unequal distributions of power, wealth and opportunities in their society? Or would it mean helping them to acquire the skills to secure a job? And how would either of these best be achieved? Second, who would be construed to be ?most at risk?? Would they be rurally located girls of an ethnic minority, mired in structural poverty? And how would they best be helped? By building infrastructure (roads, electricity grids, piped water) for economic and social development, or by building schools and places of sanctuary? Context, as Michael Crossley and Keith Watson (2003) claim, matters. Universally applicable best practices might, in sum, be described at high levels of generality, but might not be so easily set down at the levels of specificity normally required to gain significant traction at the practical level.
This situating of the answer to the question about the very possibility of a universal best practice on a continuum leads to a consideration of the second assumption made in the claim that ?established best practice? can and should be implemented in a local development context: the assumption that such practices can be transferred across and implemented in different contexts. In one sense, we have already considered that assumption: context matters. Fairly abstracted ideals of best practice might well be universal, but whether practices described at a high level of specificity can be readily implemented in new contexts is another question. Detailed descriptions of best practices will inevitably be more sensitive to and dependent on context than will more general descriptions. Crossley and Watson provide numerous examples in their book, Comparative and International Research in Education, in support of their oft-made caution about
the importance of cultural and contextual sensitivities in both educational research and educational development. Studies of sustainable educational reform or sustainable national development ? perhaps focused on successful [?best?] practice ? could benefit greatly from more in-depth cross-cultural analyses, enhanced reflexivity and a more critical and culturally informed [perspective] (2003, p. 81).
In some respects, however, this discussion of the second assumption, that ?best? practices can be transferred across and implemented in different contexts, is the least interesting of the debates that arise from a critical consideration of the three assumptions I discuss here. It is a debate that is largely able to be settled empirically. What is perhaps more interesting are the questions underlying the third assumption, that ?best practices? should be implemented in different, local development contexts. An argument against this thesis arises from one of the difficulties of a discourse of evidence-based ?best practice?: that the discourse implies an ?applied science? of professionalism that rather too easily precludes the political engagement and commitment which theorists in the traditions of both critical theory (from Arendt and Freire to Habermas) and post-structuralism (such as Foucault or Baudrillard) would argue is necessary for change. The technicist orientation associated with the discourse of evidence-based ?best practice? promises, as Maggie Maclure (2003) has suggested, to relieve local actors of the responsibility of engaging in the risky, political and imaginative efforts necessary to make and remake their realities.
Apart from removing the political responsibility for finding appropriate procedures and solutions from local actors, it can be argued that the transplanting of ?best practice? from elsewhere also removes from those actors any sense of moral responsibility for the outcomes that follow the implementation of somebody else?s ?best practice?. Biesta (2007) situates this issue in a tension between scientific and democratic control over educational practice and research. He draws on Dewey?s pragmatism to conclude that it?s not only about ascertaining the most effective ways to achieve certain educational or development ends. It?s also about the desirability of the ends themselves, an inquiry which extends beyond scientific researchers to the community as a whole.
As Biesta remarks,
'Evidence-based practice provides a framework for understanding the role of research in educational practice that not only restricts the scope of decision making to questions about effectivity and effectiveness but that also restricts the opportunities for participation in educational decision making. ? [I]t is disappointing, to say the least, that [almost] the whole discussion about evidence-based practice is focused [predominantly] on technical questions ? questions about ?what works? ? while forgetting the need for critical inquiry into normative and political questions about what is educationally desirable (2007, pp. 6, 21).'
There is of course almost no gainsaying the efficacy of practices appropriately based on good science. But there is also no gainsaying the efficacy (and not just the moral importance) of democratic local participation in the process. The discourse of evidence-based ?best practice?, it can be argued, seduces local participants rather too quickly into believing that they have a secure foundation for the policy or practice they?re about to implement. This can encourage a passive reliance on the ?international expert? and his (usually his) ?best practice?. Local participants are thus reduced to the status of observers, who would naturally fail to take both moral and practical responsibility for the successful implementation of the strategy, for its effectiveness and outcomes. There is a certain disempowerment in the view that here we have a fail-safe recipe, an established ?best practice? based on ?international evidence?, so we can simply rely on it. Any blunders and it?s the recipe?s fault, or that of the chef in the guise of the international expert. It?s not ours. Neither the fault, nor the recipe.
References
Biesta, G. (2007) Why ?What Works? Won?t Work: evidence-based practice and the democratic deficit in educational research. Educational Theory, 57 (1), 1-22.
Crossley, M.and Watson, K. (2003) Comparative and International Research in Education: globalisation, context and difference (London and New York: Routledge, Falmer).
Dewey, J. (1938) Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925?1953, vol. 12, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986).
Maclure, M. (2003) Discourse in Educational and Social Research (Buckingham: Open University Press).
Mason, M. (2005) A Justification, after the Postmodern Turn, of Universal Ethical Principles and Educational Ideals. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37 (6), 799-815.
Popper, K. (1983) Realism and the Aim of Science (London: Routledge).
Back to full contents of NORRAG NEWS 39.
Download the full issue of NORRAG NEWS 39 in pdf.