Background: COVID-19 accentuated an evergreen dilemma in evidence-informed policy making--the imperative to synthesise the best available evidence with limited time to produce high quality synthesis. The pandemic prompted the adaptation of evidence synthesis practices to match the urgency of the crisis, and heightened demand by policy makers,…

In current educational research communications, especially in English and increasingly also in German publications, the term "evidence" refers to international homogenizing gold standards and is often linked to European evidence policies, large scale assessments and justified and proven knowledge. Against the background of international…

Background: Knowledge brokering plays an important role in the evidence-to-policy system, but little is known about whether and how it occurs within government departments. Aims and objectives: Using empirical evidence from one UK government department, this article analyses how knowledge brokering takes place inside the policy making process and…

In playing with the concept of 'credibility', this article presents a critical examination of the discourse of evidence and the programming of upbringing in early intervention policy and practice. The truth claims of the evidence discourse in policy are explored through a single complex case study of an early intervention city in Northern Ireland.…

Policy and research engagement is a timely topic for researchers, decision-makers, and higher education institutions that aim to promote engagement and impact. Examination of the complex research-policy relationship in the higher education sector has been largely overlooked. This paper addresses this issue by presenting findings from in-depth…

The ongoing implementation of research-based learning (RBL) within the higher education core curriculum leads to a growing number of students who conduct their own research projects during their course of study. Although previous studies have indicated that research-based learning has positive outcomes for students, their causal link remains…

The growing use of artificial intelligence in education extends and intensifies technologies of governing, including datafication, performativity and accountability. In this article, we outline how the use of AI and data science has the disruptive potential to create new norms in education policy and governance. We report on an ethnographic…

Background: Despite the growing attention given to the political process of evidence-based policymaking (EBPM), we still know little about how evidence is processed at the early stages of the policymaking process, especially at the agenda-setting stage. Whether and when political elites pay attention to evidence-based information is crucial to the…

Scopus, EBSCO, ERIC and British Education Index were interrogated in a systematic review of primary research since 2014 addressing expert practice and outcomes in education and care for young people with special educational needs and disability in the UK. Grey literature and studies of medical settings, preschool children, mainstream education or…

Although social work, as a profession, has increasingly emphasized the importance of evidence-based practice (EBP), social work students do not consistently learn to infuse EBP as a process in their daily practice, contributing to low EBP uptake in the field. Communicating evidence to clients is an ethical imperative for informed consent and a…

Background: Government-funded knowledge brokering organisations (KBOs) are an increasingly prevalent yet under-researched area. Working in the space between knowledge and policy, yet framing themselves as different from think tanks and academic research centres, these organisations broker evidence into policy. Aims and objectives: This article…

This work explores the use of learning theories in curriculum development and gathers evidence for what good practice in this area looks like. By exploring the academic literature in this area, the authors hope to find information that curriculum documents do not provide. The following research questions were proposed: (1) Is there evidence of…

In Bayesian random-effects meta-analysis, the use of weakly informative prior distributions is of particular benefit in cases where only a few studies are included, a situation often encountered in health technology assessment (HTA). Suggestions for empirical prior distributions are available in the literature but it is unknown whether these are…

We empirically examined the effectiveness of how the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) technique structures task information to help reduce confirmation bias (Study 1) and the portrayal of intelligence analysts as suffering from such bias (Study 2). Study 1 (N = 161) showed that individuals presented with hypotheses in rows and evidence items…

The aim of this article is to review the psychometric properties of the psychological tests that are being used in the Nordic countries during pregnancy and the child's first two years of life. A systematic literature search was performed for 33 identified tests routinely used in health care, using specific review databases as well as PsycInfo,…