Enhancing Students’ Holistic Development Through Evidence-Based Educational Interventions

• In Event: Using Evidence-Based Practice to Improve Education in Underdeveloped Regions: Four Empirical Studies from One Longitudinal Project in China

Proposal

Educational improvement is one of the focal topics on recent reform agendas worldwide (e.g., Lewis, 2015; Li, 2022). So far, two main approaches to educational improvement have emerged in the literature: the top-down approach (e.g., focusing on the overarching policy design and implementation) and the bottom-up approach (e.g., identifying effective local practices and scaling them up to a larger population or region). Evidence-based practice (EBP), which originates from medicine and emphasizes making professional practice decisions based on high-quality scientific research evidence and repeatedly testing the effects of evidence-based practice, is becoming another approach (LeMahieu et al., 2017; Yates, 2012). Lately, EBP has been introduced into China’s education system, triggering a series of research and practice on using EBP to improve education in the Chinese context (e.g., Zhu & Zhu, 2020). Against this background, this study investigates the strategies and effectiveness of leveraging evidence-based practices to enhance students’ holistic development in County Jin – an underdeveloped mountainous region of China.

Guided by the core idea and general procedure of EBP, we first conducted exploratory qualitative interviews with nine school administrators and teachers to obtain contextually relevant and crucial information regarding holistic student development. Next, based on the interview results and informed by relevant research literature and expert reviews, we constructed a host of indicators to operationalize the construct of holistic student development and developed tools for assessing holistic student development. Then, using the assessment tools, we measured students’ holistic development level with 24 classes involving 786 elementary and 206 middle school students in County Jin. The assessment results revealed a generally low level of the participating students’ holistic development. The students’ moral and health development was at a particularly low level. Furthermore, we observed students’ general achievements related to physical activities, health development, ethics in sports, nutrition knowledge, hygiene, and positive psychology. Nevertheless, targeted improvements were still relatively low and needed further improvement.

To address the identified problems, the research team crafted a series of evidence-based actions, including guidance meetings, specialized training for teachers and school administrators, and translating research findings into practical interventions. These actions aimed to refine existing strategies and introduce evidence-based approaches to enhance teachers’ effectiveness in enhancing students’ holistic development. Currently, we are still in the phase of enacting evidence-based actions. We will systematically evaluate the effectiveness of the actions in the next few months and present complete results and comprehensive reflections at the conference if the proposal is accepted.

Based on the preliminary findings, the study highlights the potential of evidence-based practices in advancing educational improvement (Slavin, 2017). Policymakers and educators should establish more explicit frameworks and guidelines and encourage routinely incorporating evidence-based measures into educational practice, reform, and improvement. By focusing on student’s needs and development and enacting research-informed educational interventions, evidence-based practices can help advance educational improvement with greater precision, effectiveness, and efficiency. The evidence-based practice experiences can also be refined into new research evidence to strengthen the knowledge base of educational research and practice.

Authors

• Xudong Zhu, Beijing Normal University

• Lisha Liu, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University