The evidential basis of “evidence-based education”: an introduction to the special issue

In the last 15 years or more, there has been a significant shift towards what has been called "evidence-based education" (EBE).While the phrase may seem benign -after all, who would want to base practice on anything other than evidence -proponents often appear to accept only particular meanings for the term 'evidence'.A strict, fixed hierarchy of more or less acceptable study designs places randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and meta-analyses of these at the top as a 'gold standard'.