Evidence-Based Practice
VUE Number 6, Winter 2005
Audio Clip 5:
An interview with Meredith Honig and Cynthia Coburn
Shifts in work roles to support evidence use.
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TRANSCRIPT:
CC: Another issue is that using evidence for ongoing decision making requires a pretty major shift in work roles in districts. Traditionally, the way most districts use evidence has been for monitoring and compliance reporting. And what we're talking about here is using evidence to support decision making and using evidence to support schools and schools' work. So, it's a shift to more of a service role. These are very different models of professional practice. They're very different roles.
And I think to really move towards evidence-based cultures in districts, and work practices, is going to require some professional development to help people learn new ways of working with data and new orientations towards schools to support their work with data.
MH:
We've also seen that there are different ways to organize around that kind of evidence use. One of the things I would like to do is build on the ready expertise of my staff around knowledge use. Who has the kinds of relationships with schools that you need to have to collect good data about what's happening at a school site? I'd want to put those people in that position. Who knows how to crunch numbers? I'd want to keep those people in a different role. So part of it is to think about evidence use as, not one activity, but multiple activities that can be productively spread across the staff.
