Background: COVID-19 accentuated an evergreen dilemma in evidence-informed policy making--the imperative to synthesise the best available evidence with limited time to produce high quality synthesis. The pandemic prompted the adaptation of evidence synthesis practices to match the urgency of the crisis, and heightened demand by policy makers,…

I explore how "low-quality evidence" from program performance might still be useful in decision-making. Conceptually, a local government named "Here" is motivated to consider a program from "Elsewhere" that seems to show year-over-year exemplary performance. Here must manage five sources of uncertainty about whether…

Background: Knowledge brokering plays an important role in the evidence-to-policy system, but little is known about whether and how it occurs within government departments. Aims and objectives: Using empirical evidence from one UK government department, this article analyses how knowledge brokering takes place inside the policy making process and…

Previous research has identified contradictory patterns in autism upon probabilistic reasoning tasks, and high levels of self-report paranoia symptoms have also been reported. To explore this relationship, the present study assessed 64 non-autistic and 39 autistic adults on two variants of a probabilistic reasoning task which examined the amount…

Evidence synthesis (ES) has emerged as a key research method within the social and behavioral sciences. Academic librarians, as experts on information search and retrieval, are often highly valued contributors to faculty ES projects. While many libraries have formed team-based ES services to support researchers, and have discussed insights from…

Courses of Black German culture taught in the United States implicitly confront expectations of comparison between, if not ranking of, anti-Black racisms of the two countries. Through a critical self-reflection and evaluation of my own experiences teaching Black German culture as a White instructor, I suggest that White instructors of these…

This study investigated 3- to 5-year-olds' (N = 64, 37 girls, 62.5% White, data collected between 2021-2022) ability to use probabilistic information gleaned through active search to appropriately change or maintain expectations. In an online fishing game, children first learned that one of two ponds was good for catching fish. During a subsequent…

Policy and research engagement is a timely topic for researchers, decision-makers, and higher education institutions that aim to promote engagement and impact. Examination of the complex research-policy relationship in the higher education sector has been largely overlooked. This paper addresses this issue by presenting findings from in-depth…

Interest in trauma-informed approaches in schools is high throughout the US, UK, Australia, Canada and other countries, but the empirical evidence on whole-school responses to trauma is limited. This conceptual and theoretical review explores relevant literature; outlines existing conceptual models for trauma-informed organisations, including…

Encouraging the idea of a growth mindset in which students believe that they can improve their ability, as opposed to a fixed mindset, has been suggested as an effective and relatively cheap approach to improving student attainment at school. This paper offers a comprehensive review of the evidence from growth mindset interventions. After a…

Developing an adequate understanding of the nature of science includes developing an understanding of the uses and importance of models in science. General accounts of science aimed at university students, however, tend to neglect this aspect. A noticeable exception is the simple model of the key elements of a scientific result presented by Giere,…

Have you ever given instructions to your students, only to receive blank stares or confusion? Clarity is an essential part of teaching and learning, and every interaction we have with students is the foundation for moving learning forward--we must make every interaction count. Backed by the latest education research on what really works, Teacher…

Like other papers in this symposium, this essay approaches the question of responsible belief through the lens of social epistemology: what are the processes by which knowledge claims, evidence, perspectives, and arguments get shared within knowledge-making communities? In this paper, Nicholas Burbules argues that these processes are essentially…

Social work pedagogy is at a crossroads. A classically liberal approach is being replaced by one derived from postmodernism and critical theory (PCT). As this shift is mainly paradigmatic, the first half of this paper describes the nature and history of these two competing perspectives. Key differences between liberalism and PCT are discussed and…

Meta-analytic studies of second language (L2) learning typically employ a classic approach to meta-analysis. Although the classic approach can clarify findings, a multivariate, multilevel meta-analysis (3M) approach increases transparency by accounting for (a) dependencies in the evidence presented by primary studies, (b) methodological…