Decolonizing the evidence‐based education and policy movement: revealing the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature discussing evidence‐based education, practice, policy, and decision‐making from a critical perspective. In this article, drawing on the literature and policy documents related to evidence‐based education in the USA, Britain, and Canada, I join this critique and offer an anticolonial perspective. I argue that proponents of evidence‐based education unknowingly promote a colonial discourse and material relations of power that continue from the American‐European colonial era. I posit that this colonial discourse is evident in at least three ways: (1) the discourse of civilizing the profession of education, (2) the promotion of colonial hierarchies of knowledge and monocultures of the mind, and (3) the interconnection between neoliberal educational policies and global exploitation of colonized labor. I conclude with the decolonizing implications of revealing some of the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform.