Jim Hewitt and Nidhi Sachdeva: Reframing teaching as a science-based profession

One of the twin goals of The Next 30 Years is to reimagine education reform as a practice-driven enterprise—less about pulling policy levers and more about what happens between teachers and students in classrooms every day. The other is to turn up the lights on researchers, thinkers, and writers whose work deserves to be better known among practitioners and policymakers alike. This week’s featured piece, Beyond Belief: Reframing Teaching as a Design Science, hits both marks.

Coauthored by Dr. Nidhi Sachdeva and Dr. Jim Hewitt, and originally published on their Substack, The Science of Learning, this essay makes a compelling case for a shift in how we think about teaching—not governed by beliefs and preferences, but a design science rooted in evidence and intentionality.

Dr. Sachdeva is a leading Canadian researcher in the Science of Learning, specializing in the intersection of educational technology and evidence-informed learning design. Dr. Hewitt is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. The pair bring serious scholarly credibility to the work of bridging cognitive science and classroom practice. I’m grateful for their permission to share their work with U.S.-based readers of The Next 30 Years. -- Robert Pondiscio

In his provocative paper, “Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices”, Douglas Carnine makes a bold claim: unlike medicine or engineering, education is not a science-based profession.

This may initially strike some teachers as odd. Don’t teacher education programs teach instructional methods that are well-grounded in evidence? Isn’t continuing professional development based on solid research?

Douglas Carnine argues that, for the most part, they are not.

In his paper, Carnine contends that education lacks the scientific rigor found in fields like medicine or engineering. He cites examples where educational thought-leaders rejected research-grounded approaches, such as Direct Instruction, even after they dramatically outperformed other models in large-scale, controlled studies. He goes on to suggest that instead of embracing what works, many education experts tend to prioritize untested innovations, or methods that align with their ideological preferences.

Is Carnine right?

We think he is. Education, as it currently stands, is clearly not a science-based profession. When teachers face a tough classroom problem, they rarely turn to research for answers. More often, they rely on instincts, experience, or strategies picked up from colleagues. That’s not to say these things don’t have value—they ...