academic life • 31 July 2025
When the people get left out of education
I've recently been proofreading a book about Improvement Science in education, which is got me thinking about why I didn’t really warm to IS, even though I feel like I should be a big fan. It’s a big part of a lot of EdD work and actually a good methodology for getting new ideas and practices to "stick" that are research-based, and I am really interested in change management. Beyond my own program work in it, I have attended some conference sessions as well, so I'm no stranger. But something about it (at least in some contexts) wasn't quite sitting right.
I may have an idea of what that is now. This particular article that I was reading was ... fine; it had some good information about using IS in education, but I finally noticed what it was that was bothering me. Everything about the writing of it was kindof cold and felt really impersonal and reminded me a lot of "business-speak" writing. Yes, of course as an editor, I know all about different writing voices and that for a book of education research, there is a certain level of professionalism that is expected. But—I could have been reading about how to fix a toaster. Somehow in this whole article about how to embed and encourage educational practices that uphold equity standards for special education students, it was like there were no people involved.
I do think in some ways, this is symptomatic of a larger issue in education (at least in the US). I don’t know this for 100% certainty, but I suspect that the improvement science models were likely pulled into education from the business world, where change management is A Thing. (And where a lot of what I’m about to rant about can also apply!)
Of course, in the neoliberal capitalistic business world, we are (unfortunately) used to workers being talked about as "human capital." Since everything in capitalism boils down to numbers, we've been trained to forget that what we’re actually talking about are PEOPLE. But in education, at least theoretically we try to remember that when we’re talking about “evidence-based practices” and “asset-based models” that what we’re really talking about is trying to act like human beings with (brand new) human beings!
So when in books and articles like these researchers write about the need for “educator evaluation” and how to ensure that new “evidence based” practices that should be put into practice and maintained, sometimes the language becomes too focused on the practices. So much so that somehow, even when the hurdles to the kinds of activities they’re talking about are recognized, because of the language, it doesn’t feel like what we're really talking about is people.
Sentences like “research shows that ongoing reinforcement of new practices is more effective than one-time workshops” make me want to scream! [This is not an actual sentence from the piece that originally inspired this post, but it is similar.]
Mostly because, uh, NO SH*T SHERLOCK! Ask any actual person if learning something new is easier when you're able to have multiple sessions and feedback over a course of time (vs. just once), and most people would probably say, “yeah, duh.” It doesn't take an educator or any kind of degree or training to understand this. I don't think we need any "research" to understand or acknowledge this point.
But that’s exactly one of the problems with too much of these "evidence-based practices" (that politicians especially like to talk about)—nobody seems to be asking educators or (gasp!) students how classroom practices affect them or what they think (or, in the case of educators, likely KNOW) is effective and how to improve school experiences.
Just like so many protocols dreamed up by upper management in a large business that aren't based on the knowledge held by the people on the frontlines who are actually doing the key activities of the business, which is often interacting with customers. I’ve worked in a LOT of different organizations, in varying levels, and I have seen some incredibly innovative and smart people who knew exactly what was going on with a company and what needed to change in order for it to do more/better business (which is generally about doing right by your customers), but who were never consulted. And just as often I've seen people who had no interaction with customers—or the employees who did interact with them—try to come up with methods for increasing business. But somehow, when they didn't work, they were confounded as to why. [smh]
While I love me some research, mostly because I love learning and investigating, I know that research divorced from reality, especially in areas that deal with people, won’t be very effective—either because it doesn’t take into account the needs of the people involved or how actual people think and behave.
Understanding the role of real people in/from research is something I really learned in my Masters work. I did research in the linguistics of empathy in fiction writing and how it applies to narrative legal writing (which I also presented at an international conference). A key finding was that people (even judges!) are not usually convinced by facts; they are moved by how you can make them FEEL—because we are not the “rational man” that economists would like us to believe. We are weird, irrational, emotional beings who are complex and smart in our ways. And when we acknowledge that we can use it to advantage as writers.
So whether it be for researchers and writers in education OR business, I think that one of my jobs as an editor is to help my clients remember that there are PEOPLE involved in their processes and to not write as if there aren’t. Because in both fields, the basis of our work is people, and if we forget that we are in danger of making even more of a mess than what we have on our hands.
