“If we fail to use evidence, we could end up hindering sound policymaking.”

This is the essence of the current call to use more evidence in policy and practice. However, simply calling for evidence in the policy process will not lead to better policymaking. In fact, such a call reflects a limited understanding of how policymaking actually works.

This call may instead signal a deeper issue — a search for rationality amid growing polarization and misinformation — as ideological forces intensify, creating divisive allegiances fuelled by social discontent.

That said, we must recognize that sound policymaking has existed long before the emergence of the evidence-use field and the unprecedented amount of systematic evidence now produced, thanks to the relatively recent expansion of the tertiary education sector.

Past social policies addressing poverty, well-being, health, employment, or education succeeded without relying on rigorous evidence.

For example, the National Health Service Act of 1946 effectively established free and universal healthcare in the UK; the New Deal Social Security Policies (1933 – 1935) in the US supported nationwide economic and social recovery after the Great Depression; and Chile’s National Program for Complementary Foodstuff (PNAC) of 1954 distributed milk to families in exchange for participation in preventive healthcare programs. These policies relied more on shared values and political consensus than on the production and demand of sound evidence.

Despite this historical precedent, we still recognize the important, though limited, role that evidence can play in policy decisions.

This blog highlights the main drivers of good policymaking: technical efficacy, which refers to a policy’s ability to achieve its intended goals through sound methods and evidence-informed practices; and social and political legitimacy, which ensures that the policy is accepted, supported, and viewed as fair by the public and political stakeholders.

Both are essential components in the design and implementation of effective policies. Having said that, the policy process is far more complicated than finding the right instruments, scale an effective program, or advocate for a desirable social good. It is also needed to achieve wide political consensus over contested issues; one of these, the ways in which societies provide education, increase academic performance or reduce the socioeconomic learning gaps.

What the policy process exhibits across different jurisdictions and countries is a huge diversity of practices and dynamics. To provide better recommendations about the use of evidence, we must understand how the social practices and political institutions shape the factory of policy making.

Faced with the unexpected diagnosis that evidence generation does not necessarily translate into evidence use, the general response has been to focus on improving the relationship between research and policy.

Previous responses have focused on effectively disseminate research findings to the right audiences or strengthening co-productive models of work between researchers and decision-makers. Under this approach, the absence of productive links and bridges between the two subsystems has led to solutions to improve engagement, bridging, alignment, nexus, connections, and so on, between politicians in the ministries for education and researchers producing scientific facts in universities and research centres.

Now, we are urged to think based on system-level approaches about evidence mobilisation. However, the key question is whether these proposals have conceived adequately about how the policy process works and which opportunities it offers for making the best use of research evidence across different policy contexts.

A framework, commonly identified as neo-institutionalist, consistently interrogates the stubborn stability of practices — the rules, norms, and processes in action that favour conservation over change. Yet, in education, evidence seeks to contribute to the transformation of educational inequality. However, what seems to prevail is resilience, not innovation.

Those of us working to mobilise evidence seek to transform the practices of social actors institutionally and organizationally located to innovate by using new cognitive resources to make decisions. The goodwill of a well-educated and enlightened community of evidence mobilizers alone will not easily alter long-established patterns of political culture and decision-making processes. We need to put on our lenses to see the intricacies of political institutions, processes, and social interactions.

Evidence, on its own, will not drive any significant change in policymaking. As we know, evidence — and research in general — are just a small piece in the vast sea of policy-making and practical activity. For researchers, mobilizers, intermediaries, or brokers to do their job effectively, they must navigate the complexities of political institutions, organisations, and socio-political interactions to influence these dynamics.

Failing to pay sufficient attention to real-world entities, processes, and practices will diminish the impact of any effort. Thus, it is not about an abstract claim of ​“research and policy engagement”, it is about the real doings of organisations, activities and interactions among institutionally situated people that shape the form and meaning of educational policies.

In this sense, no policy is neutral regarding political ideology; it always embodies a set of core beliefs about what constitutes a good society or quality education. These underlying normative frameworks and ideologies shape the goals, priorities, and implementation strategies of policies, influencing how they are perceived and evaluated by various stakeholders. The crucial question is to determine which types of policies we advocate — progressive or conservative — and what role evidence can play in advancing policies that promote social values such as social justice, equity, and learning for all.

This brings us to the final point: the question of how we conceive and understand the reality of policy change. What assumptions do we hold when we discuss changes in policy or practice? Do we envision radical events, spontaneous outcomes, gradual processes, consensual agreements, or something else? Any form of policy change inherently involves some degree of power redistribution, a tension between ideas, interests and social positions.

Evidence mobilizers will be more effective if their theories regarding policy change make explicit how evidence connects to power dynamics. A key question is how the new field of evidence production and use reshapes the landscape of stakeholders and their influence on educational policy and practice. So far, this remains an open discussion.