Millions being spent on UK children and families initiatives, a new government press release almost every day – but where’s the investment in research and where’s the evaluation evidence to show that any of it is working?
Why two Blueprints programs which suffered similar setbacks during a second phase of evaluation met different fates – one losing its place in the Model Programs list, the other holding steady.
“Policy makers, educational leaders, and teachers value research when it supports their existing practices and beliefs, but often reject it if it does not, regardless of its quality…”
The Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi said that the only effective mind is a “beginners mind” — one that is always open to revision, one that is not too attached to its current view. It takes real discipline to keep our minds open in this way. This year’s Bennett Lecture provided us with an especially powerful demonstration of how rewarding such discipline can be.
Resources may be scarce and policy makers might have to make difficult decisions about what to buy. But a more rational strategy that invests early for later benefits would make sometimes nitpicking and frequently complicated comparisons between the value of one "flagship" prevention program and another irrelevant.
Why is promoting fidelity in the implementation of evidence-based prevention programs like singing an Irish ballad? The policy co-ordinator at Penn State’s Prevention Research Center, Brian Bumbarger, explains the connection between the oral tradition and effective practice.
Alexander Pope was musing about the temperament of the wise critic when he famously wrote in 1711 that “To err is Human; to Forgive, Divine”, but social psychologists are finding that a forgiving nature has transformative powers even in the modern home.
Have researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand hammered the last nail in the coffin of the idea that single parenting is ever at the root of children’s problems?
Millions being spent on UK children and families initiatives, a new government press release almost every day – but where’s the investment in research and where’s the evaluation evidence to show that any of it is working?
Nick Axford explains the differences between English and Welsh approaches to implementing and evaluating Sure Start – and considers the lessons for the future.
Judy Hutchings, prime mover behind the successful implementation and evaluation of Sure Start in Wales, gives a step-by-step account of how to do right what others across the UK border did wrong.
UNICEF says infant mortality rates are at an all time low; but reports in the leading UK medical journal The Lancet question the accuracy of the figures and detect a lack of resolve to make simple and effective health measures widely enough available.
In the reaction to the shooting in Liverpool of an 11-year-old boy, Michael Little detects echoes of the furore that followed another notorious child murder in 1993 and a distinctly familiar lack of political insight into the worst – and rarest – of crimes.
What do Gordon Brown’s first weeks in the premiership mean for UK children’s services? Is it the same team with the same game plan playing with the same resources? Just a case of substituting the manager at half time? Michael Little assesses the new PM's 'government of all the talents'.
Bridging the treacherous divide between good science writing and the newsroom with a smart combination of penetrating analysis and good humor has made The Guardian’s weekly Bad Science column one of the success stories of print journalism in the UK.
It must say something about the insecurities of parenting on both sides of the Atlantic when coverage in The Guardian newspaper of long-term research by the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development generates several yards of correspondence and weblog responses, some of it almost as lurid in its prejudices as a recording of The Jerry Springer Show.
More