Evidensbasert undervising

"Ideen om evidensbasert undervising - eit filosofisk forsvar"

submitted
In the debate about evidence-based teaching one often encounters philosophical arguments. Such arguments are characterized by being principled and general, in the sense of not resting on whether meta-analyses or randomized controlled experiments are well or poorly executed. In this article I look at several such philosophical arguments against evidence-based teaching and the relevance of RCT’s for education: instrumentalism, normativity, judgment, contextuality, complexity, and identification. I conclude that none of these arguments are valid. This does not mean that evidence-based education is unproblematic, but it does mean that the best arguments are practical rather than philosophical.

Key words: Evidence-based teaching, RCT, instrumentalism, contextuality, philosophy of science