Ideology and the evidence-based policy. Educational research and the construction of social reality
The term evidence-based policy EBP describes a public policy informed by rigorously established evidence. The idea of EBP has evolved from evidence-based medicine and today this term is being used to describe all areas of public policy, including policy of education. EBP is usually set in opposition to the conviction-based policy CBP and presented as as a model of policy making free of ideological influences. The goal of this paper is to discuss this opposition between evidence- and conviction-based policy and to argue, using the example of Programme for International Student Assessment PISA, that the EBP in general, and particulary in the area of education, is in fact ideologically affected. To achive this goal, author refers to the very concept of ideology, to its history and possible ways of understanding, provided by contemporary socio-political philosophy.