Outsourcing Science to Scientists Lacks Merit

'Rampant' Donald H Taylor (you need to see his picture to understand why he's 'rampant') urges a bit more emphasis on evidence-based practice in Learning and Development, less reliance on myths and a polite tone during discussion of the merits of different approaches (the comments are good too).

I completely agree, but wonder if we're too willing to outsource our science.

North London, a few years before blogs and Social Media. . .
Picture the scene: about fifteen of us are sitting in a classroom in North London on a spring Tuesday evening working towards QTS. We're all practitioners in colleges, adult education or training organisations. And tonight's class is really really tedious. It's about Skills for Life Core Curriculum Descriptors, if you must know. We are restless.

So, one of us distracts the teacher with a piece of research they've read. It's not important what the research says (it's about learning vocabulary because all of us have a connection of some kind with language teaching) but it's one of those evidence-based pieces with practical advice that, for some people, is counter-intuitive, because that's the way they are.

The class splits into roughly two groups. About half the group say the research is probably pointing in the right direction. About half the group say the researchers have made some fundamental errors. And the class debates, ending up agreeing to disagree after things get a bit heated.

Everybody has joined in and contributed, all except for me, who sits there in an all-too-rare moment of reticence. Because, frankly, I'm shocked and a little confused. Why are we debating this?

Blogs and Social Media. . .
Back in the present, I've written about Learning Styles and how they're probably a bit flaky. I've since read similar debunkers on Cognitive Load Theory (which, as a theory, I find quite convincing),
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (which seems a bit bonkers to me) and Multiple Intelligences (which I'm kind of Dilberty about).

All of the posts seemed to cause debate. What are we doing debating all this stuff?

Frankly, I couldn't give a toss if you agree or disagree with a piece of research. What I'd like to know is how you used it in your work and what you learned. It didn't occur to anybody in my class to suggest testing out the ideas on real people in a real learning environment (nor did it occur to our lecturer to suggest it as an option).

The day after my tedious class I went to work and tested the research out on classes. There were no arguments, and I discovered the 'truth' for my situation was somewhere in between the two poles of the class debate.

Learning from deliberate practice is a core competency - not at all the kind of thing you outsource to researchers.