Writing in the on ¡°the scourge of scientism¡±, Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, argues that ¡°the use of scientific evidence for political ends is particularly troublesome in the sphere of social policy¡­An area where this is most apparent is education¡±.

Particularly to be deplored, in Professor Furedi¡¯s view, was the use of the term ¡°intervention¡±, taken over from medicine, in an educational context, which he believed ¡°reveals how much today¡¯s cultural elite believes in the existence of educational pathology ¨C that is, great numbers of children suffering from some form of quasi-medical educational deficit¡±.

Where educators ought to be asking ¡°What do children need to know?¡± Professor Furedi claims that ¡°the current obsession with what works distracts us from thinking about the intellectual and knowledge content of the curriculum¡±.

Asked where he sees the weaknesses of the academic research which feeds into such policies, Professor Furedi told Times Higher Education that it was often ¡°very thin and methodologically naive ¨C it doesn¡¯t pay enough attention to context¡±.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

He saw lots of research based on ¡°small samples of very few students¡± and ¡°one-off projects which don¡¯t link up with other projects¡± but had little sense that the discipline was ¡°generating an expanding corpus of knowledge¡±.

Instead of being ¡°problem-driven¡± and open-minded in seeking solutions, education research tended to be ¡°very much policy-driven, and often commissioned by Department of Education, which implicitly knows where the problem lies in advance¡±.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Both in schools and in universities, according to Professor Furedi, there was room for different teaching styles and no need for a single model to underpin the training and assessment of teachers and academics.

¡°I have a very distinctive teaching style, which I think is effective,¡± he said, ¡°but I wouldn¡¯t recommend it for everybody, since it depends on personality. There¡¯s more than one effective teaching style. It¡¯s not a science.¡±?

matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com