In this article, the authors argue the case for scientific evidenced‐based practice in education. They consider what differentiates science from pseudoscience and what sources of information teachers typically regard as reliable. The What Works Clearinghouse is discussed with reference to certain limitations of its current operation. Given the relative paucity of ‘gold standard’ research in education, an alternative model for assessing the efficacy of educational programs is proposed as a temporary solution.

This article first examines recent theoretical and empirical research on reading development and instruction in English‐speaking countries. Then, a study is described that examines the effects of a synthetic phonics‐emphasis Direct Instruction remedial reading program on the phonological processes of students, with teacher‐identified serious reading problems, attending several Melbourne suburban schools. The 206 students (150 males and 56 females, mean age 9.7 years) were pre‐tested on a battery of phonological tests, and assigned to the treatment condition or to a wait‐list comparison group. The 134 students in the intervention group received the 65 lessons (in groups of up to 10) of the Corrective Reading: Decoding program from reading teachers at their schools. When compared with a similar cohort of 72 wait‐list students from the same schools, the students made statistically significant and educationally large gains in the phonologically‐related processes of word attack, phonemic awareness, and spelling, and statistically significant and moderately large gains in phonological recoding in lexical access, and phonological recoding in working memory. The study contributes to an understanding of the relationship between phonological processes and reading, and to an approach to efficiently assisting students whose underdeveloped decoding places their educational progress at risk.

Management of inappropriate behaviour is a major priority in special education. Evidence‐based practice dictates that interventions to reduce inappropriate behaviour should be evaluated at the individual level to demonstrate their efficacy in the classroom. This study illustrates the evaluation of an evidence‐based procedure (response interruption) for reducing perseverative requesting in an adolescent boy with autism and severe intellectual disability. The boy used a speech‐generating device to request snacks during baseline and response interruption conditions. During both conditions, the boy had to wait 30 seconds while the snack was being prepared. Requests that occurred during this wait interval were defined as perseverative. Intervention involved blocking perseverative requests and prompting the child to wait. An ABAB design was used to evaluate the effects of the response interruption procedure. The results demonstrated that response interruption effectively reduced perseverative requesting, while maintaining appropriate requesting at other times. The study illustrates how special educators might evaluate evidence‐based practice in the classroom.

In this article, the evidence regarding a proposed ‘cure’ for dyslexia and other, arguably related, conditions is examined critically. The origins and history of the Dore program and its progenitors, its introduction to Australia and its advertising claims are reviewed, with a focus on the claims made with regard to dyslexia, and particularly with regard to reading. The article compares the claims made about the program and the existing published research, considers whether the Dore program makes conceptual sense in the light of current scientific research and theory, evaluates the existing specific evidence adduced by its advocates as proof for the efficacy of the program, and compares the claims made by the program promoters with the scientific evidence available. It is concluded that none of the necessary desiderata to substantiate claims for a cure are met by the available scientific evidence for the efficacy of the Dore program.

Research on the efficacy of sensory integration therapy (SIT) is addressed in this article. Initially, past key reviews of intervention studies until 1994 are considered. Subsequently, more recent studies from 1994 until 2007 are examined. Consistent with numerous previous reviews, no robust evidence supporting the efficacy of SIT was found. Alternative and more parsimonious explanations for purported effects of SIT are considered. In light of the accumulated lack of evidence for the effectiveness of SIT, continued use of the technique outside of research contexts does not appear to be justified.

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) provides online reports to the public about the scientific evidence for educational interventions. The quality of these reports is important because they effectively tell the non‐scientific community which programmes do and do not work. The aim of this brief review is to assess WWC’s report on a clinically popular, yet theoretically controversial, intervention called Fast ForWord® (FFW). Some of the methods used by WWC to assess FFW were problematic: the literature review included studies that had not passed peer review; it failed to include a key study that had passed peer review; alphabetic skills were assessed with phonological awareness outcomes; effectiveness ratings were based on statistical significance; terms peculiar to WWC were not clearly defined; and existing quality control procedures failed to detect an error in the WWC report. These problems could be addressed by making minor adjustments to WWC’s existing methods and by subjecting WWC reports to the scientific peer‐review process before they are released to the public.

Educational policies for students with a disability in Australia, the USA, the UK and in most western countries stipulate that inclusive placement should be an option available to parents. This article examines three principal drivers of inclusion: social justice principles, legislation, and research findings, and considers the extent to which each of these has impacted on inclusive policy and practice. The article considers the research base for inclusion, and examines the extent to which the policy and practice of inclusion is supported by evidence. It concludes with some suggestions for a research agenda that focuses on the particular contextual challenges and complexities faced in Australasian school settings, whilst recognising international directions in the identification of evidence‐based practices.

Principles of scientific data accumulation and evidence‐based practices are vehicles of professional enhancement. In this article, the author argues that a scientific knowledge base exists descriptive of the relationship between teachers’ activities and student learning. This database appears barely recognised however, for reasons including (a) the scientific tradition may not be seen as an appropriate basis for humanistic decision making; (b) personal observations can override impersonal statistics; (c) alternative frames, such as postmodernism, may contribute towards an anti‐science stance; (d) qualitative research may be viewed as representing a sampled universe; (e) educational theorising thrives upon dichotomisations which cannot be mapped against objectively‐secured data; and (f) individuals are relatively unable to undertake the mental processes demanded of theory change. The author also discusses the distinction between scientific reasoning and everyday cognition, as illustrated by research findings into cognitive biases and heuristics.

One goal of basic research in education is to identify the variables of effective instruction. As this pursuit has been conceived, however, its theoretical problems make it unlikely that the effort will provide a clear picture of instructional variables, their interactions, or the kind of teacher training that is implied by instructional variables.