Evidence-Based Practices

According to an article published by The Center for Evidence-Based Practices: Young Children with Challenging Behaviors, evidence-based practices are the use of interventions, strategies, and supports that have research documenting their effectiveness. Practices that are evidence-based are ones that have been demonstrated as effective within multiple research studies that document similar outcomes. A particularly useful definition of evidence-based practices was offered by Dunst, Trivette, and Cupsek (2002): Practices that are informed by research in which the characteristics and consequences of environmental variables are empirically established and the relationship directly informs what a practitioner can do to produce a desired outcome.

An evidence-based practitioner is an individual involved in interventions and supports for young children who identifies and uses evidence-based practices.  Evidence-based practitioners include teachers, therapists, counselors, social workers, and anyone else who deliberately attends to the empirical basis for the practices they use in their work with children.

Continue reading more of this article and about how to define Evidence-Based Practices by downloading this PDF.