Introduction: What Can Be Learned from International Contexts about How to Foster Evidence-Informed Practice?

This introductory chapter to “The Emerald Handbook of Evidence-Informed Practice in Education: Learning from International Contexts” describes the volume's purpose/intended contribution, analytic framework, and organization. Accordingly, first it provides a definition of evidence-informed practice while also outlining challenges and benefits of broadly bringing it about. This chapter explains how comparative analyses using systems approaches – which have, to date, been scarce and limited – can hold great potential for achieving context-specific insights regarding how to foster EIP. The present volume, as noted in the chapter, aims to do just this: It houses a massive, international comparative study of educators' patterns of evidence use across a range of global contexts. Volume contributors each followed a particular, dual analytic framework, which is detailed in this chapter. The chapter concludes with a description of how the volume is organized and provides a brief thematic analysis to showcase the volume's intended contribution.