Educational freedom in relation to evidence-based education

My insider’s perspective as an educational developer and teacher trainer motivates me to be attentive on pedagogical questions and educational -in the sense of what’s happening in formal school institutions- issues. One of this topics has to do with -the for me sensitizing concept of- educational freedom. The interrelatedness of the notions ‘education’ and ‘freedom’ and the meaning, implications and conditions of educational freedom could briefly be described as

Freedom for education
In a juridical interpretation, educational freedom means –at least in the Belgian Constitutional law and slightly different in the Netherlands- the freedom of a group of citizens to start a new school (the so-called active freedom) and the freedom of parents and pupils to choose for a particular school (the so-called passive freedom). The liberty to provide schooling is in a certain way the condition for education. To guarantee this constitutional freedom (confessional) non-governmental as well as governmental educational institutions are funded.
 

Freedom in education

Another aspect of (constitutional) educational freedom involves the possibility for a school to create and act upon a particular pedagogical, religious and/or ideological vision: in Belgium schools are free to implement a pedagogical project and governmental or public control is based only on content criteria, not on pedagogical criteria.
A more general perspective stipulates the professional autonomy and academic freedom of teachers as a condition or possibility for teaching. Academic freedom is seen as the right of teachers and students to choose the teaching method; teacher autonomy as the freedom to choose the content of what they teach, study and research without restrictions imposed by the public authorities.

Freedom through education

The goal of education is often described as empowerment or emancipation of the child or student. The school in this sense is seen as the area where pupils become free, autonomous adults.   

Evidence-based education (EBE) or the variant of evidence-informed education can be seen as a kind of antipode to some interpretations of educational freedom. F.e. a stronger government control can establish the implementation of evidence-informed education, educational effectiveness research (EER) argues usually in favor of less autonomy for teachers and schools. The rationale behind this recommendation is that schools should not have the freedom to make choices that according to educational research are less favorable for student development.

In this research project I shall explore the three connotation of educational freedom and the affiliation and/or disconnection with the way of thinking of the EBE-movement and/or evidence-informed education.  

Besides a literature review, I shall explore the method of deliberative inquiry[1], a qualitative collaborative research approach whereby teacher trainers, teachers and student teachers will investigate and debate together the questions ‘is educational freedom desirable or necessary?’ I intend to illuminate this question and possible answers in a broad group of stakeholders and shall analyze the data of this practice-based research approach in consideration with the co-researchers and taking into account the core concepts of the literature review.

[1] Deliberative inquiry is defined as a policy and action-oriented form of inquiry which links the interrelated task of doing practical curriculum activity with conducting formal curriculum inquiry through a systematic structure of deliberation about curricular decisions. Harris, I. (1991). Deliberative inquiry: The arts of planning. In: E.C. Short (ed.). Forms of curriculum inquiry. New York: State University of New York Press.