The Research Base for Innovation: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Building Evidence

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Wellness, Resilience, and Innovation: Holism and Health in Education and Beyond It

Abstract

Evidence-based practice is the standard of excellence in most fields, particularly clinical medicine. The fields of educational psychology and policy also call for a robust set of data in which to ground innovative practices, ensuring that policies and practices are built upon a dependable framework of factually based theory. What kinds of data can be entered as “permissible evidence” when evaluating a potentially beneficial innovation? Should advances in neuroscience inform how we approach education? If a practice has been demonstrated to improve cognition in one population and setting, for example, can we allow these studies to be considered part of the evidence-base for supporting the practice in the educational arena? What would a transdisciplinary approach to evidence-based practice look like?

Author

• Elizabeth R. Mackenzie, University of Pennsylvania