From intentions to implementation: Establishing a culture of evidence-informed education

Four years after Ben Goldacre exhorted those of us working in the English education system to claim the prize of evidence (Goldacre, 2013), have we achieved his stated goal? Goldacre argued that both the teaching profession and student outcomes could be improved by, amongst other things, 'establishing a culture where this evidence is used as a matter of routine'. So, four years on, does this culture exist? This article concludes that while the race is underway, the prize is yet to be fully claimed; it also suggests ways in which this goal may be more efficiently achieved through the use of goal theory and implementation intention theory. Establishing a culture In education, Fullan (2006) described the notion of 'culture' as a set of guiding beliefs and expectations, which are manifest in the day-to-day operation of schools. In the context of this article, the routine use of evidence in decision-making can become a part of that culture only once the beliefs and expectations of decisio