When I was first teaching in the early 90's, there was a lot of rhetoric about being a reflective practitioner. Of course, like any slogan, the meaning of it varied radically from person to person. The ideal, of course, was that we think about what happened during instruction and come up with ways to respond effectively. The soft humanity of reflection proved ineffective on a large scale, most likely because of a lack of evidence that it 'worked.' Given the various meanings of being reflective, this is, of course, a funny conclusion. Now we are in the era of teaching as a technical activity. We have graphics showing us how looking at data will diagnose problems that we teachers will simply know how to solve. However, evidence-based practice must make contact once again with the highly uncertain work of teaching. I have no reason to believe that it will shine a light on the true complexity of teaching and learning in a broad way anymore than reflection without good frameworks for action will. Most of the time, evidence-based practice becomes 'who will we target for remediation.' It is a management tool. Teaching, at its best, should be a humanizing endeavor. The humanity of students get lost in our current data schemes that effectively call them names, like 'below basic.' It makes me nostalgic for reflection. At least that did not carry the bludgeon of technical labels that too often convince teachers and children that some people are not educable.
