#21 Tone Kvernbekk | Evidence-based Practice?
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY
(This transcript summary was AI-generated and then edited by the podcast hosts for quality assurance)
#21 Tone Kvernbekk | Evidence-based Practice?
- a podcast dialogue with Michael Noah Weiss and Guro Hansen Helskog
INTRODUCTION
In this episode, the hosts Michael Noah Weiss and Guro Hansen Helskog welcome Tone Kvernbekk, Professor at the University of Oslo’s Department of Education. Her work span philosophy of science, argumentation and narrative theory, and the philosophy of education, with a particular focus on how evidence is understood and used in practice.
The conversation explores the tensions between evidence and judgment in teaching, the meaning of phronesis or practical wisdom, and how educators can develop ResponsAbility—the cultivated capacity to respond wisely to the unpredictable realities of practice.
FROM TEACHER TRAINING TO PHILOSOPHY – THE BEGINNINGS OF A PHILOSOPHICAL EDUCATOR
Kvernbekk begins by tracing her intellectual journey from teacher education to philosophy and back to educational theory. After completing teacher training, she recalls feeling “irresponsible to be let loose on innocent children,” which prompted her to pursue further studies at the university. Encountering philosophical problems such as cultural relativism in social anthropology sparked her lifelong engagement with questions of understanding and knowledge.
Returning to education with a philosophical lens, she came to see theory as indispensable to practice. Concepts like learning, motivation, or intelligence are theoretical—they shape how teachers interpret experience, even if they are not directly observable. Hence, theory is not something abstract and detached but part of the everyday reasoning of practitioners.
For Kvernbekk, teacher education should therefore cultivate more than methodical skills: it must nurture the quality of thinking. “Nothing is as practical as a good theory,” she insists. Philosophy offers tools for reasoning, inference, and reflection—capacities that improve the quality of professional judgment.
RETHINKING EVIDENCE: FROM FOUNDATION TO INFORMED JUDGMENT
Turning to her article Evidence-Based Practice: Four Controversies (2018), Kvernbekk challenges the widespread misunderstanding of what it means to be “based on evidence.” Practice, she argues, cannot be based on evidence because evidence itself does not prescribe action; rather, it informs practical reasoning. What practice is truly based on are causal hypotheses—assumptions such as “if I do X, Y will follow.” Evidence serves to test the truth or falsity of these assumptions.
She illustrates this with a light-hearted story about discovering face- and finger marks on the chocolate cake she had bought for her mother`s birthday. Then she saw her son`s chocolate covered face and hands. This was evidence supporting a hypothesis. In the same way, teachers form hypotheses about learning interventions and then seek evidence to evaluate their effects.
Kvernbekk warns against reducing evidence to quantitative data from randomized controlled trials. Such evidence may be valuable, but it ignores the local context where teaching occurs. Practitioners need “local evidence”—knowledge about their particular students, resources, and conditions. Otherwise, interventions that worked elsewhere may fail in their classrooms.
Addressing the influence of John Hattie’s Visible Learning and its quest for “what works best,” she finds the project too narrow. While not dismissing its insights, she cautions that it risks turning education into an instrumental search for universal methods. Evidence should serve, not substitute, professional judgment.
CAUSALITY, INSTRUMENTALITY, AND THE DYNAMICS OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGE
Kvernbekk defends causality as a legitimate and necessary concept in educational theory. Education aims to bring about change; thus, understanding causal relations is crucial. Although causality is sometimes treated with suspicion in the humanities, she sees it as a “dynamic way of thinking” that helps teachers understand how particular actions may lead to desirable outcomes.
She distinguishes causality from instrumentality: causality concerns how factors interact to produce effects, whereas instrumentality concerns the value of actions—whether something is done for its own sake or as a means to an end. Both, she maintains, have a place in education. Teachers reason instrumentally every day, yet some activities—like play or dialogue—possess intrinsic value. A wise educator must hold both perspectives in balance.
FROM EVIDENCE TO WISDOM: PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS, PHRONESIS, AND THE ART OF JUDGMENT
Discussing her article Practitioner’s Tale, Kvernbekk explains that teachers need argument models to reason from research findings to practical conclusions. She favors Stephen Toulmin’s argument model, which allows different forms of evidence—quantitative or qualitative—to support justified decisions about what to do in practice. Such reasoning, she notes, avoids the mistaken idea that practice is based on evidence; instead, evidence becomes one voice in an ongoing deliberation.
The hosts then bring in Harald Grimen’s concept of practical syntheses and Aristotle’s notion of phronesis. While she values these ideas, Kvernbekk offers a careful critique: practical judgment can also be wrong or misguided. She cautions against romanticizing phronesis as a guarantee of wisdom.
Her long-standing dialogue with Gert Biesta enters the conversation here. Both agree that education should never be reduced to technical recipes; yet they disagree on the role of evidence. Biesta emphasizes risk and moral judgment; Kvernbekk insists that sound evidence remains part of responsible decision-making. They share, however, a deep concern for the singularity of each classroom situation—no universal recipe can replace a teacher’s thoughtful deliberation.
RESPONSABILITY AND THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS IN TEACHER REFLECTION
Linking back to the central idea of ResponsAbility, Kvernbekk explores how pedagogical thought experiments can help practitioners prepare for action. Thought experiments, she explains, allow teachers to imagine possible scenarios—“running an experiment in your head”—to test what might happen if a certain course of action were taken.
By systematically reflecting on causal links and potential outcomes, teachers become better prepared to face both expected and unforeseen consequences. This mental rehearsal cultivates foresight, flexibility, and moral preparedness—qualities at the heart of ResponsAbility. “Part of responsibility,” she says, “is to think things through as carefully as we can before we act.”
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHERS TODAY
In closing, the hosts invite Kvernbekk to reflect on the responsibilities of educational philosophers in a globalized and pressurized educational landscape. She sees several key tasks:
- To provide conceptual tools that help practitioners think more clearly and critically.
- To question the aims of schooling, especially the dominance of performance and measurable competencies.
- To rethink educational purposes in ways that reduce pressure on students and restore intrinsic educational values.
She notes with irony that Ralph Tyler’s mid-twentieth century “behavioral objectives” model—once heavily criticized—now shapes learning outcomes across all levels of education, even universities. For Kvernbekk, this signals an urgent need to re-examine what we mean by achievement and success in schooling.
CLOSING REFLECTIONS
The conversation ends on a reflective note. For Tone Kvernbekk, philosophy’s task is to improve the quality of thinking in education—to help practitioners reason better, judge more wisely, and act with greater sensitivity to context.
As the hosts thank her, the episode leaves listeners with a clear takeaway:
ResponsAbility in education is not about following evidence blindly, but about cultivating the thoughtful, imaginative, and ethically attuned reasoning that allows us to respond wisely to the complexities of practice.
