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Introduction
In an activity concerned with care, relationships, & creativity, talk of science can sound clinical, rigid, or even irrelevant. Many teachers & school leaders reasonably ask: Can research really capture the complexity of teaching? Doesn’t experience matter more? Shouldn’t we trust our professional instincts? These are fair questions but they risk missing an essential point.
Being better-informed
Teaching is not just an art. It’s a complex, high-stakes practice that shapes lives. Like medicine, aviation, or engineering, it demands not only intuition & responsiveness, but also reliable knowledge that has been tested, challenged, & refined over time. That’s what educational research can offer. Not easy answers or one-size-fits-all solutions, but clarity amid complexity, & tools for making better-informed choices.
Prioritising scientific insight in teacher education, curriculum design, lesson planning, & daily instruction is not about replacing judgement, it’s about strengthening it. When we understand the why behind what works, we move beyond habit, hearsay, & personal bias. We start building deeper, broader, more coherent & cohesive expertise.
As Carl Hendrick puts it, “The science of learning empowers teachers to make better decisions in their classrooms. Decisions grounded in how students actually learn, not in how we might wish they did. It replaces intuition with insight, and replaces well-intentioned guesswork with clearer guidance.” (Defending the Science of Learning)
Frequently stated objections & rebuttals
In the discussion that follows, we’ll examine some frequent objections to research-informed teaching & why, when we look closer, they may not hold up as well as we think.
“Let’s not overstate the certainty research can offer in a field as complex as education.”
- Good educational research acknowledges complexity & often includes context-specific findings & limitations.
- Uncertainty is not a reason to downplay evidence, but a reason to interpret it carefully, not reject it altogether.
- Other fields (e.g. medicine, climate science) still rely on rigorous research to guide decisions despite their complexity.
“Lived realities of teaching often resist clean, quantifiable conclusions.”
- Research doesn’t need to be “clean” to be useful. It provides patterns, probabilities, & tested frameworks that help avoid anecdotal, trial & error approaches & constantly re-inventing the wheel.
- Teaching realities are diverse, but that doesn’t make all responses equally effective; some strategies consistently outperform others across contexts.
“What works in one classroom may not translate to another. That’s not a flaw but a reflection of complexity.”
- True, but transferability isn’t binary. Research helps identify conditions & adaptations that improve the chance of success.
- Without a research base, we can’t distinguish between effective adaptation vs. trial & error based on hunches.
“Everyday experimentation, reflection, & responsiveness is often the best framework.”
- Reflection & responsiveness are important, but unguided experimentation wastes time & risks harm.
- Being “research-informed” enhances rather than replaces reflection by anchoring it in tested knowledge.
- Without some evidence base, teachers risk confirmation bias; mistaking familiarity for effectiveness.
“We need both the evidence base & the flexibility to adapt it meaningfully. Not either-or.”
- This is a false dichotomy: no one is arguing for “evidence-only.” The concern is with elevating anecdote or opinion over research, not rejecting flexibility.
- Flexibility within an evidence-informed framework is the goal, not instead of it.
“Dismissing teacher anecdotes, opinions, & polls ignores their actual value.”
- Teacher voice matters but polls measure teachers’ & students’ perceptions & opinions, not actual learning outcomes.
- Teacher preferences tend to reflect habits or culture, not what works best for learning.
- Using polls to justify educational methods without cross-checking with outcomes is risky & misleading.
“Research doesn’t hand us certainty, it offers possibilities.”
- Yes, but those possibilities are not all equal. Some are backed by replication & data, others by wishful thinking.
- The role of research is precisely to help us weigh those possibilities more accurately than intuition alone can.
But most importantly, good-quality research often shows is that learning & teaching are often counter-intuitive & surprising. What we think might work doesn’t & what we assume wouldn’t work does. Understanding what’s actually happening & why things work the way they do enables us to make better-informed decisions while designing, planning, & teaching in the classroom.
EduMyths
What’s more, despite decades of progress in education research, many widely debunked ideas, so-called EduMyths, continue to shape classroom practice & teacher training. From learning styles & left-brain/right-brain thinking to the belief that praise always boosts motivation, these myths persist because they feel intuitive or align with personal experience. However, intuition is not a reliable guide to what actually works. Without a shared, evidence-informed knowledge base, teachers are left to navigate a flood of contradictory advice, marketing-driven resources, & untested practices. This not only wastes time & resources but can actively undermine student learning. To raise professional standards & really help learners, we must embed robust research evidence at the core of teacher education & development; challenging outdated beliefs & replacing them with accurate, tested understanding of how students really learn.
Why is teacher belief in EduMyths such a bad thing?
I think this LinkedIn comment by an educational researcher puts it very clearly:
One question that people might ask is ‘why does it matter if teachers believe in myths about learning’, given we can’t conclusively prove the extent to which it influences their practice?
I argue it matters because myths like learning styles point to a broader foundational belief. If teachers subscribe to a view of learning that emphasises student difference rather than the essential sameness of students’ cognitive architecture, that is going to have consequences for instructional decision-making – likely in a direction that moves away from effective practices.
“The message of learning styles is really one of ‘every student is different and needs to be taught differently’. And that’s impractical and not in line with the evidence.”
The fact that such a significant number of teachers subscribe to the myth hints at a deeper issue, too, Jha says.
“It suggests that they don’t necessarily have a strong understanding of how learning actually happens in the mind and what cognitive science and educational psychology says about those topics.”
“It really raises questions about their ability to effectively discriminate between and ineffective practices, given that teachers are making so many important instructional decisions, both outside the classroom during their planning time, but also inside the classroom as they’re teaching.”
Challenge & growth
Being more scientific in our approach to teaching is what separates genuine expertise from simply reinforcing what feels comfortable or familiar. Relying solely on what feels good or aligns with our existing beliefs can limit growth & perpetuate ineffective practices. To truly develop as expert teachers, we must be willing to question our assumptions, confront our biases, & engage with evidence that challenges how we think about teaching & learning.