These shortcomings are often the result of two common conditions within local schools. First, school staff lack the time, training, and inclination to become knowledgeable about the best evidence emerging from the research on teaching. Second, despite this emerging evidence, school staff show a strong tendency “to pretend not to know what we know.” It is easier to stick with what teachers have always done and believed, rather than go through the often painful process of changing current thinking about teaching—the way teachers practice it and the way people evaluate it.
