Evidence for Learning helps great practice become common practice in education.
We help educators increase learning by improving the evidence of what works and why. Operating nationally across all sectors of the Australian education system, we enable and support evidence-informed education practice in Australian schools.
Why
Evidence for Learning exists to support great practice across all schools and classrooms in Australia.
Educators face challenges to make the best decisions about which approaches will have the greatest learning impact for their students. Have you ever asked yourself:
- There are too many choices, too little time!
- How do I know if it works?
- How can I get the promised impact?
- It can’t work like that in my school.
- It's not within my budget!
- I don’t believe evidence and data will help me improve.
- I’m not yet capable and confident to analyse and evaluate data and evidence.
- It takes too much time and is too difficult to get the value.
Evidence for Learning helps to overcome these barriers.
How
We help evidence come to life.
We broker, translate and mobilise knowledge between education researchers, policy makers, systems leaders, school practitioners and the wider community.
Evidence for Learning is funding research, supporting schools to make better decisions about how to use that evidence and working with the broader system to support the greater use of evidence.
'It is frontline professionals who… should be at the heart of evidence–informed practice.' (Sharples J, Evidence for the Frontline, 2013)
'Schools need to become incubators of programs, evaluators of impact and experts at interpreting the effects of teachers and teaching on all students.' (Hattie J, What Works Best in Education: the Politics of Collaborative Expertise, 2015)
What
We help Build, Share and Use Evidence to improve learning in all schools.
Build evidence through the Learning Impact Fund.
The Learning Impact Fund funds the creation of new Australian education research. An independent Fund, it chooses education programs that are rigorously researched and evaluated by a panel of education experts.
We produce plain English reports of this research for use by educators showing a particular approach’s:
i) Average months’ worth of learning progress
ii) Cost to implement and;
iii) Security of evidence
We place emphasis on ‘empirical’ evidence with research for causation, quantitative measure of learning gain and the counterfactual (e.g. randomised control trial where possible).
Share evidence through the freely available Teaching and Learning Toolkit.
We develop online summaries of global evidence for 34 education approaches (e.g. repeating a year) with a dashboard of
i) Average months’ worth of learning progress
ii) Cost to implement and;
iii) Security of evidence
We localise The Toolkit with reference to Australian research and evidence (through a Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne project).
We develop Implementation Guides (how to guides, staff-room materials, case studies) for approaches that have been proven to have a high impact on students’ learning (starting with Feedback).
We actively promote and engage with the education community through social media, education conferences and network.
Use evidence through building a community committed to developing an evaluative culture in schools and early learning centres.
If you'd like to know more about Evidence for Learning
Make contact:
Matt Deeble - for more about sharing evidence.
Tanya Vaughan - for more about using the evidence.
Evidence for Learning is incubated by Social Ventures Australia (SVA) with the support of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Education Endowment Foundation (UK) as founding partners.