ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we invite readers into a dialogue on how we can collectively democratize the evidence movement in education. Significant strides have been made to build and use evidence in U.S. education over the past 15 years (Tseng, 2016), but these efforts have produced mixed responses to their effectiveness and in the degree of support for them among different stakeholders. Many initiatives have been driven by top-down forces and imperatives, with too little attention provided to the perspectives, expertise, and diversity of people who are concerned with education. All too often, teachers have perceived evidence-based policies as something done to them rather than with them (Finnigan, Daly, & Che, 2013). Educators more broadly have seen research conducted on schools and not with them. Those perceptions have contributed to a distrust of data and research evidence and of policymakers’ efforts to use them to drive change.
