Teacher, educator and father of three kids here. I strongly disagree that "there is not enough evidence based science in teaching" etc. If there is something really to highlight what's wrong with education systems all over the world, it's too much "evidence based science". Every educational psychologist and his dog has a novel theory how learning works, how something should be taught and have a ton of evidence why. And of course all generations of educators so far have been idiots. It's THE reason nobody wants to teach any more.
"Teachers are not only burnt out and undercompensated, they are also demoralized. They are being asked to do things in the name of teaching that they believe are mis-educational and harmful to students and the profession." (https://archive.ph/MEqrK)
The truth every teacher faces is that there is no single silver bullet. There is no any "method" in education that can replace simple things – time, effort, motivation, affiliation etc.
Actual evidence-based science would be fantastic. But a lot of what I've seen being touted as "science" in this field is flimsy or not science at all.
The primary cause is the downfall of research done by universities. Our institutions are churning out mountains of bullshit "science" in certain fields, including in education. This junk science is now being pushed down into the classroom and it's devastating for educators and students.
Once I was consulting a very large family foundation in this space and asked why there are no randomized trials in education. I was told that researchers in the space think it's unethical to conduct studies with control groups on students. (Which, to be clear, is moronic.) The result is there's very little in the way of solid evidence about what even works.
The main problem is that teaching is only one of many things to influence what and how people learn. From teachers perspective ...
If I conclude after a lesson that learning took place then why? Is it because the way I taught (words and examples I used etc) or because kids had finally enough time to think about topic and things just fell into place and it really didn't matter how I taught? Or it didn't matter at all and they knew it already, but finally just realized what I asked from them? Was it learning at all or just memorizing? If learning didn't took place then why? Is it because of normal cognitive overload? Is because of lack of attention? If yes, then why? Tired? Hungry? Just a bad day? They just didn't like me? And these are only very basic and general questions. Normally there is 20+ kids in the classroom and they all might have different reason why they learnt or didn't. There is a lot of going on in every kids' mind and all these matter how they learn up to very big and complicated things like culture, family background and group dynamics. Every experienced teacher knows that depending on class results might be very different even if you use same methods, examples, words etc.
"Teachers are not only burnt out and undercompensated, they are also demoralized. They are being asked to do things in the name of teaching that they believe are mis-educational and harmful to students and the profession." (https://archive.ph/MEqrK)
The truth every teacher faces is that there is no single silver bullet. There is no any "method" in education that can replace simple things – time, effort, motivation, affiliation etc.