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Evidence-Based Reform in Education: Global Perspectives

For a very long time, educational policies have been based on ideological standpoints or individual views rather than evidence or best practices. However, evidence-based reform has been gaining momentum in the past two decades in many parts of the world. Evidence-based reform is dedicated to bringing education into a cycle of innovation, evaluation, and dissemination that has been proven successful in fields such as medicine, agriculture, and technology (Haskins, 2014; Kolada, 2013; Slavin, 2020). For example, medical experts around the world are currently doing everything they can to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. When evaluating whether a treatment or a vaccine is effective, what they rely on are not small studies with questionable methodologies but large, wellconducted randomized controlled trials (e.g., Ghebreyesus, 2020). Medical experts and their evidence-based practice have helped humanity overcome countless challenges and are trusted by governments worldwide. Do high-quality studies and evidence play such an important role in educational policies and practices? In response to this question, this special issue invites researchers and practitioners from seven countries spreading across Asia, North America, and Europe to provide an overview of evidence-based reform in education.