Comparing evidence production and use for global policy in education and public health

• In Event: The rise of knowledge brokers: The translation of research evidence into policy and planning - part 2

Proposal

What lessons can be learned from other sectors regarding the use of evidence in policy? Cairney and Kippen’s (2021) comparisons of equity policy research in health and education find that most of the education equity policy research describes policy concepts (for example, policy transfer), without referring to the core body of policy literature (with Steiner-Khamsi’s work being a notable exception). In health, comparisons of evidence-informed practice and policy often focus on the dominant model of knowledge production and use for policy derived from medicine, evidence-based medicine (EBM). Even within EBM, criticisms have arisen of an over-zealous application of this approach in medicine, including the sidelining of doctors’ expertise and ethics, or identifying inequalities and corruption built into clinical trials, or indeed, individual variability among patients and social determinants of health beyond the physical body being treated. Global public health provides a rich—and more appropriate—source of comparative learning for education. This is due, on one hand, to the variety of perspectives offered by public health research and policy communities on the nature, role and use of evidence in policy planning and decision-making. As in education, public health confronts a global environment in which what “counts” as evidence, which disciplinary contributions matter, and how research is funded, produced and used globally is highly political and uneven. Across sectors, evidence use in policy making is contested, complex and highly varied, structured by multiple political, social, economic, institutional and cultural factors. This comparator case study examines what the education sector might learn from public health research and governance about how best to strengthen the production and use of research evidence for policy planning, development and implementation. It combines an analysis of systematic reviews, learning from expert interviews and a bibliometric analysis of scholarship in education and public health to arrive at a series of recommendations for strengthening strengthening the role of evidence in international education policy, planning, funding and practice.

Authors

• Moira V Faul, NORRAG, Geneva Graduate Institute

• Bart Sebastiaan Gabriel, The Graduate Institute, Geneva

• Anna Numa Hopkins, NORRAG, Graduate Institute