Evidence-based practices have been gaining ground since the formal introduction of evidence-based medicine in 1992 and have spread to the allied health professions, education, and other fields.
Many educators continue asking for research reports for
everything. Daniel Kahneman in his book –Thinking fast and slow - said, ‘We
are far too willing to believe research findings based on inadequate evidence
and prone to collect too few observations in our own research.' LINK.
Once a researcher says something everyone jumps on the bandwagon and repeats what he says without the slightest bit of thought. This is exactly what happened about 45 years ago when one researcher said that it was Phonological Awareness Deficit (PAD) that was the cause of dyslexia. More than a hundred so-called educators repeated what he had said.
I disagreed with the above theory and explained why it cannot be PAD which is the cause of dyslexia. Timothy Shanahan said that there were no research reports to support what I said.
Common sense will tell that if a kid can read in Malay and Hanyu Pinyin but not in English then the cause of that kid being unable to read in English cannot be because of phonological awareness deficit.
