This came my way via Mike Chitty on Facebook.
"Expanding the Evidence Universe: Doing Better by Knowing More": A paper prepared for the 2011 Harold Richman Public Policy Symposium. "Salient point: there is valuable knowledge that is not absolutely certain knowledge.
By dint of a bit of digging around, I found a reference to it on a blog "Striving for Change" (which led me to a website for Strive Network:
Education is a lifelong experience that begins well before a child ever sets foot in a classroom and continues long past a cap and gown commencement.
What if we could support every one of our children, from cradle to career, to have the meaningful educational experience to which they are entitled? How great would our impact be?
I bookmarked that site because it looked interesting enough to return to.)
Anyway, back to expanding the evidence universe. You can find the paper in google docs or if it works I might be able to set up a link to a downloadable .pdf file as follows here: Download Expanding the Evidence Universe Dec 2011
"The idea that nothing is worth knowing unless you know it for certain has its place, but not when applied to complex social programs and policies.(i) We can learn so much, including about program effectiveness, without insisting on absolute proof."
I like the sound of that enough to read the whole paper. You may have noticed the footnote number (i) at the end of the first sentence just quoted. The footnote reads:
"This is the idea that the late MIT organizational theorist Don Schön described as “epistemological nihilism in public affairs,” the view that nothing can be known because the certainty we demand is unattainable.
I can't help smiling at that, "epistemological nihilism in public affairs". One of the main reasons our Special Free School status (and by the Big Lottery before that) was turned down was because we could not evidence with sufficient certainty demand from parents. I always thought that if Steve Jobs had had to evidence demand for the iPad before he got Jonathan Ives to design it, two of my Grandchildren would never have found out that they couldn't live without it!
"Epistemological nihilism in public affairs"! What a phrase. I just love it!
PS No doubt someone will let me know if the links don't work.
