Working Out What Works: The Case of the Education Endowment Foundation in England

Purpose: This article gives an overview of the successes and lessons learned to date of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), one of the leading organizations of the What Works movement. Design/Approach/Methods: Starting with its history, this article covers salient components of the EEF’s uniqu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Triin Edovald, Camilla Nevill
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2021-03-01
Series:ECNU Review of Education
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531120913039
Description
Summary:Purpose: This article gives an overview of the successes and lessons learned to date of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), one of the leading organizations of the What Works movement. Design/Approach/Methods: Starting with its history, this article covers salient components of the EEF’s unique journey including lessons learned and challenges in evidence generation. Findings: The EEF has demonstrated that it is feasible to rapidly expand the use of school-based randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in a country context, set high standards for research independence, transparency, and design, and generate new evidence on what works. Challenges include the need to consider alternative designs to RCTs to answer a range of practice-relevant questions, how to best test interventions at scale, and how study findings are reported and interpreted. Originality/Value: This article addresses some of the key components required for the success of What Works organizations globally.
ISSN:2096-5311
2632-1742