The school research lead : What works and the problem of side-effects

An essential element of the school research lead's role is to help incorporate evidence – research, school data, stakeholder views and practitioner expertise into the decision-making process.  Now to assist us with this task (Drucker, 2001) provides us with two useful ‘rules of thumb’ to be applied when incorporating the evidence into the decision-making process, which are:

  • Act if on balance the benefits greatly outweigh cost and risk.
  • Act or do not act, but do not ‘hedge’ or compromise.  (p196)
However, identifying the risks and costs of whether to adopt a new intervention or strategy may not be as straightforward as you might hope.   (Zhao, 2017) argues that educational research has largely ignored the potential harms arising from research into 'what works.'  As such, it may not be that easy for you as an evidence-based school research lead to identify the negative side effects associated with an intervention, which in turn makes it extremely difficult calculate whether the on balance the benefits of an intervention greatly outweigh the risks and costs.  So to aid with you with this task of weighing up costs and benefits, the rest of this post will consider the following:
  • What do we mean by a side-effect
  • Why do we need to study side effects
  • What are the apparent reasons for the lack of concern for risks of interventions in education
  • What are the implications for your role as a school research lead?

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