The need for evidence in education C.P.M. VAN DER VLEUTEN, D.H.J.M. DOLMANS & A.J.J.A. SCHERPBIER University of Maastricht, The Netherlands SUMMARY In this article a plea is made to use evidence in education. A remarkable difference in attitude is noted between university staff in their role as scientists in their discipline and in their role as teachers.Whereas evidence is the key to guide scientists in the development of their discipline, evidence on teaching and learning hardly affects their role as teachers.Teaching is, rather, dominated by intuition and tradition. However, particularly in education, intuitions and traditions are not always correct when they are submitted to empirical veri®cation. It even often turns out that our intuitions are not justi®ed or that assumed relations are far more complex. To illustrate the fallacy of our (implicit) intuitions and beliefs, a few of these assumptions are held against the available evidence.Two assumptions related to the learning of students and two assumptions related to the assessment of student achievement are discussed. The illustrations make clear that we do need to use evidence in education, just as we do in any other professional area. Being a professional teacher requires more than being an expert in a content area; it also requires familiarity, use, and perhaps production of educational evidence and theory. Introduction There is a remarkable difference in attitude between university staff as teachers and as researchers. As researchers we critically read the newest literature, we think of new approaches and theories, look for empirical veri®cation and submit our work to the critique of others through rigorous peer review.The scienti®c attitude lies at the heart of scholar- ship and is accepted by everyone in the ®eld. We also have clear rules about becoming a researcher. Good researchers are carefully selected and trained before they are allowed to contribute independently to the research.We require degrees, expertise in methodology, a demonstration of scienti®c ability through output assessment, and so on. A similar situation holds for our conduct in our profes- sional practice area. For example, as doctors we have defined a long track of training before the profession may be carried out, we have certi®cation procedures, and a system of follow-up training. We follow the literature, we are keen on the latest developments, and replace existing habits by new ones when appropriate. The situation seems quite different in education. As teachers we seem to have a different attitude. We do the things we do, because that is the way we have been raised ourselves and that is the way it has been done for many years, even centuries.We hardly read the literature on educa- tion, or, more appropriately, are not even aware that such literature exists. It is difficult to change things in education, because as teachers we are highly convinced that what we do is appropriate and any challenge to one’s convictions is an actual challenge to one’s professional integrity. Becoming a teacher requires us to be licensed in a professional area, e.g. in medicine, and that is it. We are assumed to be good teachers, because we are quali®ed in a professional area. The better we are in that area, the better we are as teachers. Speci®c didactic training or other educational programmes are not required or, in many cases, even offered. Once we are teachers we have quite some autonomy in deciding what and how to teach. Peer review, quality control, follow-up trainingÐquite common in research activitiesÐhardly exist in education. We realize that the above picture is drawn in black and white. We also realize that current practice in education is not `inappropriate’ or `substandard’.The issue in education is not whether it is substandard, but whether it can be improved.There is at least a remarkable difference in attitude to which we would like to draw attention. In this article we would like to make a plea for the awareness and use of more evidence in education. We would like to argue that educa- tion is governed by tradition and intuition. We do not see much difference in critically scrutinizing our clinical approaches to treating patients and scrutiny in our approaches to teaching students. We would like to argue that, particularly in education, tradition and intuition can actually be misleading and that empirical evidence often contradicts our suppositions and beliefs. A few areas will be discussed in this article where this is the case. We will start with an apparent assumption as we implicitly make them in our teaching practice and subsequently look at the evidence related to that assumption. The intention is not to review evidence in each of these areas, but merely to illustrate how intuition can fail us in some instances, in order to draw attention to our central argument that it is wise to look for evidence in education. We will discuss two different areas: the learning of students, and assessment of student achieve- ment. In each we will address two implicit assumptions. Learning of students Assumption: teaching is learning Looking at educational practice, the most common method of teaching is having a teacher in front of a group of students. Classroom teaching, lecture-based teaching, is the most widely used method of teaching.The implicit theory is that knowledge is transmitted from the individual who has the knowledge to the group of learners who lack the knowledge, to some extent comparable with ®lling a bucket with water. Also typical in our approach in educational programmes is to offer the scienti®c body of knowledge from a number of Correspondence : C.P.M. van der Vleuten, Department of Educational Develop- ment and Research, University of Maastricht, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. Email: c.vandervleuten@educ.unimaas.nl . Medical Teacher,Vol. 22, No. 3, 2000 ISSN 0142-159X (print)/ISSN 1466-187X (online)/00/030246-05 ½ 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd 246