Clarifying Some Myths of Teaching and Research 教研相長─解開大學教學與研究之謎（中、英文版） - 推薦序1
【Foreword】
Evidence-Based Educational Research: A Must and Only Way to Educational Reform
I like this book and I admire the authors for writing this very important book on higher education. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is concerned with educational reform, because the research work included in this book represents a new attempt to clarify many myths in discussing the quality of teaching in research-oriented universities. This book is written by Professor Way Kuo, who is a Fellow Academician of the Academia Sinica and the President of City University of Hong Kong (appointed last May with a mission to transform the university from a three-year based system to a four-year research university). Several years ago, President Kuo and his colleagues, across several universities in the United States, carried out a large scale study to investigate the teaching/research interactive processes in higher education. The contents of the book are based upon the report of that empirical study with rigorous scientific methodology and careful statistical analyses. It provides an excellent model for “evidence-based” approach to educational research and should be read by all who are concerned with educational reform.
Undoubtedly, education is a major concern for every country, because the government knows that only when its people have the ability to live happily in a modern society can the country have a better chance to survive. In particular, the essential aspects of a knowledge based economy and global competition in a modern society make it clear that educating its citizens has to be the most important administrative policies for the government. Especially in higher education, because the quality of knowledge and its translation into practical and effective applications need to be constantly upgraded, most countries in the so-called developed world has taken two seemingly opposite approaches: On the one hand, the government promotes the massification of higher education in order to enhance the manpower of the society; and on the other hand, the government allocates special fund to assist a small number of “research” universities, hoping that by focusing the increased funding on these selected few for better research facilities and personnel, several highly competitive research Centers of Excellence can be created. In addition, the universities are required to set up incubation centers so their faculty members will have a chance to interact with industrial people for research and development.
In fact, the ideas of massification in higher education and creating research centers of excellence are two government policies which are easily appreciated by the society. Many of the implementing programs are quickly approved by the Congress with a substantial fund. We witnessed in recent years a continuous budget increase in science, education, and cultural, because everyone agrees that investing on education is a first priority responsibility for a civilized society. At the same time, a corresponding improvement in research and teaching in the universities is, of course, expected by the people. However, in examining the evelopments of higher education over the last decade, the general feeling of the public about the progress is a pessimistic one. In particular, the quality of teaching seems to be getting worse as the results of massification in higher education and the heavy emphasis on research output in faculty promotion. Many experts in higher education share this gloomy view and express loudly their concern in conferences and general gatherings. What is going on? In recent years, the Ministry of Education has been making every effort to promote quality teaching in all universities, regardless of public and private, with competitive grants for innovative programs to improve undergraduate teaching. Special funds are also provided to help universities in upgrading their research facilities. The Ministry staged a series of Forum discussions and invited university administrators, professors, and people from industries to give their views from different perspectives. New accounting procedures were established to remove the bureaucratic restrictions imposed by the traditional across-the-board accounting regulations. However, even with so much governmental effort, the resulting outcome did not seem to meet the expectation of many experts. They did not question the increasing number of publications in the SCI and SSCI journals but they pointed out again and again that the quality of research remained at the same level as before. Everyone was impressed by the fact that at least five or six research universities made a substantial elevation in their worldwide university ranking. But many experts were also quick to point out that none of those universities was ranked within the top 100 and the distance between their current standings and the top universities was still too far to be neglected. The most disturbing criticism stated that too much emphasis was put on research such that their faculty members spent all their time cranking research papers (most of them just repeating the same experiments with tiny variation), at the expense of their major duty: teaching.
In retrospect, the policy of the massification in higher education led to the creation of more than 150 universities and colleges in a very small island and within a very short period of time. A major set back in all the newly created college campus they could not find a sufficient number of qualified teachers for university-level courses. Another serious problem was the lack of teaching facilities and laboratory equipments in all these universities. But the most devastating fact was that a great number of high school graduates, many of them were not well prepared with respect to their basic learning skills, were thrown into the campuses of the illprepared universities or colleges for higher education. The government did have good intention in the massification of higher education, but the results seemed to down-grade, rather than up-grade, the quality of university teaching. This is a fact and the government has to do something in order to tackle the problems in a more efficient way. Implementing a rigorous extramural evaluation is a must in order to make sure the course contents are up to date and the teaching processes are interactive and effective. Students have to be informed about the industry-relevant knowledge and practice so they can join the working force after graduation. For years, the industry has complained a great deal about not being able to recruit suitable young graduates, as if all the governmental investments in the massification of higher education are wasted.
At the other end, the government has continued to allocate additional budget for a selected number of research universities. The funding involved very strong competition and resulted in an increase in research output in terms of SCI and SSCI papers. However, the voices of criticizing poorer teaching quality continue to come in waves. Of course, the research universities should carefully listen to these voices and undertake a major task to monitor their teaching progress. But I have to admit that some of the criticisms tend to be very superficial and based on loosely speculated assumptions which usually had not been supported by solid empirical evidence. For example, the accusation that faculty members who have done excellent research tends to be poor teachers is certainly unfair. Maybe there are indeed some individual cases. But in general for most excellent research professors, research and teaching are two sides of the same thing. They are doing distinguished research because they keep up-to-date with the main stream research in a global sense, have a great and open vision about future developments, follow rigorous research procedures, have a sharp analytical ability, and most important of all, can exercise the synthetic power to extract theories from a chaos of phenomena. When they translate these above abilities and experience to teaching, more than often, they are regarded as the best exemplar professors on campus. Undoubtedly, teaching and research grow together and we know it for a long time. A good researcher is a prerequisite for a good teacher and not the other around in a knowledge-based society. Of course, one may also complain against my above statements and argue that without empirical support, they are nothing but my own opinions.
In reality, when we are dealing with issues concerning educational reforms, all of us have a tendency to regard ourselves as experts. All of us are custom to express our dissatisfaction about certain educational practices based upon personal experience or upon “episodes” echoed by “a certain friend or relative’s children” at schools. We are also used to make proposals for educational reforms based upon our personal “knowledge”on a specific educational program, forgetting the fact that others may have different experience and knowledge about the same program, and neglecting the existence of many “counter-examples.” The more authoritative one thinks about himself, the more difficult for him to get out of that self-assertive attitude. As a consequence, there have been so many well intended suggestions, proposals, and programs, but most of them failed miserably. Everyone, inside and outside of the government, is making effort to “improve” education. But the societal resentment against educational reforms continues to mount. What can be done to rectify the worsen situation? In recent years, there has been a new movement in educational research in Europe and America. After much self-reflection and examination, educators came to a definitive conclusion: In order to get rid of the short comings of educational reform programs, all the educational research has to take the one and only one approach, namely an “evidence-based” research with respect to policies and practices.
This book by President Kuo and his colleague articulates very well about how the educational research should be done. Relying on scientific attitude and methodology, they listed all important factors relevant to teaching and research, collected a huge amount of samples (from students, staff, professors, and administrators), analyzed the data with advanced multi-variable statistical procedures, and finally clearly sorted out the complicated relations among all the factors, in particular those concerning the interaction between professor’s abilities of teaching and research. These are very fine and complicated interactive relationships. They are affected by specific academic fields and they are dynamic in nature in terms of teaching situation and students’ cognitive developments. The interactive process can only be clarified by scientific methods with evidencebased supporting data collected from different schools and generated from action research programs. That is the only way one can design a sound educational reform program. No more authoritative opinions by powerful professors or politicians. President Kuo sets an important model example for all future educational reformers.
In many different occasions, I highly recommended again and again this book to university professors and experts in higher education. It is my intention to let “evidence-based” research conceptualization become a core value in our educational research culture. I believe the educational process is a special scientific research field and thus, the evidence-based research is the only approach to a successful educational reform program.
Ovid J. L. Tzeng
Distinguished Research Fellow & Academician, Taiwan
【推薦文】
以證據為基礎的教育研究：教育改革最必要也是唯一的途徑
曾志朗（中央研究院院士）
我喜歡這本書，敬佩這本書的作者們，更要鄭重推薦這本書，因為它代表學界一項非常新的嘗試，為教育研究建立了一個很重要的里程碑。這本書是我國中央研究院的院士郭位校長（去年五月他應聘到香港城市大學擔任校長，被賦予的任務是在從英式三年制轉換為四年制的關鍵過程上，帶領城大師生繼續往卓越邁進）和他的同僚在美國所提出的一份研究報告，以實證研究的科學方法，為教育的歷程建立了「讓證據說話」的典範，是任何關心教育的人都必須要學習的一本好書。
教育是每個國家最重要的大事，因為培養國民有安居樂業的能力，才能使一個國家的永續發展成為可能，尤其是在以知識經濟為主軸，呈現全球化競爭的現代社會，更促使各國政府在施政的措施上，做好人才培育的規劃。在高等教育這一個環節上，因為關係著「知識品質」的提昇以及「知識轉殖」的應用效益，所有號稱先進的國家都一致採取兩個策略：一方面加速普及高等教育，讓社會大眾的人力素質增強；另一方面則編列特別經費，集中獎助少數有實力的研究型大學，以期在設備和研究人員的精進之下，形成有國際競爭力的卓越研究中心，並且試圖由育成中心的設立，直接和產業形成互動關係。
普及高等教育及建構卓越研究中心的理念和作為，都是很容易被社會大眾所接受的，國會當然也支持政府投資教育，所以這些年來，我們的科教預算都有長足的擴張，人們也因此期待大學在研究上和教學上會有相對的進展！但是檢視目前高教的發展，大家卻不是那麼樂觀，尤其在教學的品質上，似乎有每況愈下的傾向，這樣的憂心普遍存在於高教研究者的心中。這是怎麼一回事？政府不是不用心，經費也編有特別預算來補足以往不足之處，各方對教改提出諸多善意的意見，主管高教的教育部也拋出了各項利多的鬆綁方案，但眾多學者的看法卻是研究的量增加了，質並無相對提昇，幾個研究型大學在世界大學的排名上也確實往前推進，但距離前一百名仍有一段差距。最令人不安的批評則是教授們把心力都放在研究上，拚命製造性質相似的論文，卻忽略了大學最基本的任務——教學——了。
如果從廣設大學以普及高教的層面去看，台灣在短時間內多出了上百間大學院校，師資的來源確實會是一大問題，而且許多高中高職的畢業生並沒有準備好上大學的基本能力，就大批進入許多資源及設備都不夠完善的大學校園裡，政府有意普及高教卻造成素質低落的後果。這是事實，是政府要趕快設法改進的地方，評鑑的工作也一定要積極進行，以確保教學內容和教學歷程的品質，否則空有那麼多大學院校的畢業生，企業界卻一直抱怨找不到可用的人才，好像政府對高教普及的投資都浪費掉了！
在研究型大學的這一端，政府近幾年來的經費挹注有顯著成長，競爭性的撥款方式確使幾個重點大學的研究產出增加不少，但對教學品質並無相對提昇的批評聲浪，卻是一波又一波到來。對這些批評，所有的研究型大學當然應該虛心聆聽以求改進，但令我感到遺憾的是，這些批評常常是基於一些似是而非的假設，並沒有足夠的實證數據予以支持。例如，研究做得很好的教授，卻可能被視為教學不力的指標。這是很不公平的指控，也許有少數個案是如此，但對大多數的傑出研究教授，教學和研究是一體的，他們的研究之所以能傑出，因為他們跟緊世界研究的主流，有很好而且開闊的視野，也有很嚴謹的研究步驟，更有足夠的分析能力，從數據中提煉出精彩的論點，當他們把這些能力及經驗轉換在教學的層次上，往往被認為是最佳的良師風範，所以教學相長其實是常理，好的研究者才是好教授的基本條件。可是，像我這樣的看法也不過是一種意見而已，發揮不了大作用的！
所以，當我們談教育改革時，人人都自認為是專家，大家總是從個人的經驗或親友的「故事」去表達對當前教育裡某些措施的不滿，也習慣從自己的認知去提出改革的方案，殊不知別人的經驗也許不同，而片面的故事其實是有很多反例的！越是權威人士，越打不破這種自以為是的個人意識。也因此，對於我們的教改，各地的良言美意一籮筐，但推不動的方案也一大堆，大家都在努力做事，社會的不滿卻越積越高。怎麼辦？近年來，歐美的教育研究已經開始反省，結論是：一切要回歸到以「證據為基礎」（evidence-based）的教育改革方案，才能去除這些因「個人意見」而設事的缺陷！
郭位校長的書，就是以科學態度與方法進行研究，把大學裡教學和研究相關的因素明列出來，以龐大樣本所得的數據，加上精細先進的多變項統計分析，然後從所得的結果中去釐清研究能力和教學品質的互動關係。這是個非常精密複雜的互動關係，不但和專長領域的性質有關，也會隨教學情境和學生身心發展而產生複雜的動態變化。這些歷程唯有靠科學的研究方法，以證據為基礎的論述和因地制宜的行動研究方案（action research program），才能見微知著，設計出有效的改革方案，絕不可以再回到過去以「權威人士」的意見為主，只憑某些自以為是的專家教授們說了就算的做法。郭校長和他同事的這一本大作，實在是做了最好的示範。
在很多不同的場合，我都一再向大學的教授們及高等教育的研究者介紹這本書，就是要「讓證據說話」的概念與作為深入大家心中，因為我個人認為教育歷程的研究是一個科學的專業領域，以證據為基礎的教育研究才是教改所必須且是唯一的途徑！
Evidence-Based Educational Research: A Must and Only Way to Educational Reform
I like this book and I admire the authors for writing this very important book on higher education. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is concerned with educational reform, because the research work included in this book represents a new attempt to clarify many myths in discussing the quality of teaching in research-oriented universities. This book is written by Professor Way Kuo, who is a Fellow Academician of the Academia Sinica and the President of City University of Hong Kong (appointed last May with a mission to transform the university from a three-year based system to a four-year research university). Several years ago, President Kuo and his colleagues, across several universities in the United States, carried out a large scale study to investigate the teaching/research interactive processes in higher education. The contents of the book are based upon the report of that empirical study with rigorous scientific methodology and careful statistical analyses. It provides an excellent model for “evidence-based” approach to educational research and should be read by all who are concerned with educational reform.
Undoubtedly, education is a major concern for every country, because the government knows that only when its people have the ability to live happily in a modern society can the country have a better chance to survive. In particular, the essential aspects of a knowledge based economy and global competition in a modern society make it clear that educating its citizens has to be the most important administrative policies for the government. Especially in higher education, because the quality of knowledge and its translation into practical and effective applications need to be constantly upgraded, most countries in the so-called developed world has taken two seemingly opposite approaches: On the one hand, the government promotes the massification of higher education in order to enhance the manpower of the society; and on the other hand, the government allocates special fund to assist a small number of “research” universities, hoping that by focusing the increased funding on these selected few for better research facilities and personnel, several highly competitive research Centers of Excellence can be created. In addition, the universities are required to set up incubation centers so their faculty members will have a chance to interact with industrial people for research and development.
In fact, the ideas of massification in higher education and creating research centers of excellence are two government policies which are easily appreciated by the society. Many of the implementing programs are quickly approved by the Congress with a substantial fund. We witnessed in recent years a continuous budget increase in science, education, and cultural, because everyone agrees that investing on education is a first priority responsibility for a civilized society. At the same time, a corresponding improvement in research and teaching in the universities is, of course, expected by the people. However, in examining the evelopments of higher education over the last decade, the general feeling of the public about the progress is a pessimistic one. In particular, the quality of teaching seems to be getting worse as the results of massification in higher education and the heavy emphasis on research output in faculty promotion. Many experts in higher education share this gloomy view and express loudly their concern in conferences and general gatherings. What is going on? In recent years, the Ministry of Education has been making every effort to promote quality teaching in all universities, regardless of public and private, with competitive grants for innovative programs to improve undergraduate teaching. Special funds are also provided to help universities in upgrading their research facilities. The Ministry staged a series of Forum discussions and invited university administrators, professors, and people from industries to give their views from different perspectives. New accounting procedures were established to remove the bureaucratic restrictions imposed by the traditional across-the-board accounting regulations. However, even with so much governmental effort, the resulting outcome did not seem to meet the expectation of many experts. They did not question the increasing number of publications in the SCI and SSCI journals but they pointed out again and again that the quality of research remained at the same level as before. Everyone was impressed by the fact that at least five or six research universities made a substantial elevation in their worldwide university ranking. But many experts were also quick to point out that none of those universities was ranked within the top 100 and the distance between their current standings and the top universities was still too far to be neglected. The most disturbing criticism stated that too much emphasis was put on research such that their faculty members spent all their time cranking research papers (most of them just repeating the same experiments with tiny variation), at the expense of their major duty: teaching.
In retrospect, the policy of the massification in higher education led to the creation of more than 150 universities and colleges in a very small island and within a very short period of time. A major set back in all the newly created college campus they could not find a sufficient number of qualified teachers for university-level courses. Another serious problem was the lack of teaching facilities and laboratory equipments in all these universities. But the most devastating fact was that a great number of high school graduates, many of them were not well prepared with respect to their basic learning skills, were thrown into the campuses of the illprepared universities or colleges for higher education. The government did have good intention in the massification of higher education, but the results seemed to down-grade, rather than up-grade, the quality of university teaching. This is a fact and the government has to do something in order to tackle the problems in a more efficient way. Implementing a rigorous extramural evaluation is a must in order to make sure the course contents are up to date and the teaching processes are interactive and effective. Students have to be informed about the industry-relevant knowledge and practice so they can join the working force after graduation. For years, the industry has complained a great deal about not being able to recruit suitable young graduates, as if all the governmental investments in the massification of higher education are wasted.
At the other end, the government has continued to allocate additional budget for a selected number of research universities. The funding involved very strong competition and resulted in an increase in research output in terms of SCI and SSCI papers. However, the voices of criticizing poorer teaching quality continue to come in waves. Of course, the research universities should carefully listen to these voices and undertake a major task to monitor their teaching progress. But I have to admit that some of the criticisms tend to be very superficial and based on loosely speculated assumptions which usually had not been supported by solid empirical evidence. For example, the accusation that faculty members who have done excellent research tends to be poor teachers is certainly unfair. Maybe there are indeed some individual cases. But in general for most excellent research professors, research and teaching are two sides of the same thing. They are doing distinguished research because they keep up-to-date with the main stream research in a global sense, have a great and open vision about future developments, follow rigorous research procedures, have a sharp analytical ability, and most important of all, can exercise the synthetic power to extract theories from a chaos of phenomena. When they translate these above abilities and experience to teaching, more than often, they are regarded as the best exemplar professors on campus. Undoubtedly, teaching and research grow together and we know it for a long time. A good researcher is a prerequisite for a good teacher and not the other around in a knowledge-based society. Of course, one may also complain against my above statements and argue that without empirical support, they are nothing but my own opinions.
In reality, when we are dealing with issues concerning educational reforms, all of us have a tendency to regard ourselves as experts. All of us are custom to express our dissatisfaction about certain educational practices based upon personal experience or upon “episodes” echoed by “a certain friend or relative’s children” at schools. We are also used to make proposals for educational reforms based upon our personal “knowledge”on a specific educational program, forgetting the fact that others may have different experience and knowledge about the same program, and neglecting the existence of many “counter-examples.” The more authoritative one thinks about himself, the more difficult for him to get out of that self-assertive attitude. As a consequence, there have been so many well intended suggestions, proposals, and programs, but most of them failed miserably. Everyone, inside and outside of the government, is making effort to “improve” education. But the societal resentment against educational reforms continues to mount. What can be done to rectify the worsen situation? In recent years, there has been a new movement in educational research in Europe and America. After much self-reflection and examination, educators came to a definitive conclusion: In order to get rid of the short comings of educational reform programs, all the educational research has to take the one and only one approach, namely an “evidence-based” research with respect to policies and practices.
This book by President Kuo and his colleague articulates very well about how the educational research should be done. Relying on scientific attitude and methodology, they listed all important factors relevant to teaching and research, collected a huge amount of samples (from students, staff, professors, and administrators), analyzed the data with advanced multi-variable statistical procedures, and finally clearly sorted out the complicated relations among all the factors, in particular those concerning the interaction between professor’s abilities of teaching and research. These are very fine and complicated interactive relationships. They are affected by specific academic fields and they are dynamic in nature in terms of teaching situation and students’ cognitive developments. The interactive process can only be clarified by scientific methods with evidencebased supporting data collected from different schools and generated from action research programs. That is the only way one can design a sound educational reform program. No more authoritative opinions by powerful professors or politicians. President Kuo sets an important model example for all future educational reformers.
In many different occasions, I highly recommended again and again this book to university professors and experts in higher education. It is my intention to let “evidence-based” research conceptualization become a core value in our educational research culture. I believe the educational process is a special scientific research field and thus, the evidence-based research is the only approach to a successful educational reform program.
Ovid J. L. Tzeng
Distinguished Research Fellow & Academician, Taiwan
【推薦文】
以證據為基礎的教育研究：教育改革最必要也是唯一的途徑
曾志朗（中央研究院院士）
我喜歡這本書，敬佩這本書的作者們，更要鄭重推薦這本書，因為它代表學界一項非常新的嘗試，為教育研究建立了一個很重要的里程碑。這本書是我國中央研究院的院士郭位校長（去年五月他應聘到香港城市大學擔任校長，被賦予的任務是在從英式三年制轉換為四年制的關鍵過程上，帶領城大師生繼續往卓越邁進）和他的同僚在美國所提出的一份研究報告，以實證研究的科學方法，為教育的歷程建立了「讓證據說話」的典範，是任何關心教育的人都必須要學習的一本好書。
教育是每個國家最重要的大事，因為培養國民有安居樂業的能力，才能使一個國家的永續發展成為可能，尤其是在以知識經濟為主軸，呈現全球化競爭的現代社會，更促使各國政府在施政的措施上，做好人才培育的規劃。在高等教育這一個環節上，因為關係著「知識品質」的提昇以及「知識轉殖」的應用效益，所有號稱先進的國家都一致採取兩個策略：一方面加速普及高等教育，讓社會大眾的人力素質增強；另一方面則編列特別經費，集中獎助少數有實力的研究型大學，以期在設備和研究人員的精進之下，形成有國際競爭力的卓越研究中心，並且試圖由育成中心的設立，直接和產業形成互動關係。
普及高等教育及建構卓越研究中心的理念和作為，都是很容易被社會大眾所接受的，國會當然也支持政府投資教育，所以這些年來，我們的科教預算都有長足的擴張，人們也因此期待大學在研究上和教學上會有相對的進展！但是檢視目前高教的發展，大家卻不是那麼樂觀，尤其在教學的品質上，似乎有每況愈下的傾向，這樣的憂心普遍存在於高教研究者的心中。這是怎麼一回事？政府不是不用心，經費也編有特別預算來補足以往不足之處，各方對教改提出諸多善意的意見，主管高教的教育部也拋出了各項利多的鬆綁方案，但眾多學者的看法卻是研究的量增加了，質並無相對提昇，幾個研究型大學在世界大學的排名上也確實往前推進，但距離前一百名仍有一段差距。最令人不安的批評則是教授們把心力都放在研究上，拚命製造性質相似的論文，卻忽略了大學最基本的任務——教學——了。
如果從廣設大學以普及高教的層面去看，台灣在短時間內多出了上百間大學院校，師資的來源確實會是一大問題，而且許多高中高職的畢業生並沒有準備好上大學的基本能力，就大批進入許多資源及設備都不夠完善的大學校園裡，政府有意普及高教卻造成素質低落的後果。這是事實，是政府要趕快設法改進的地方，評鑑的工作也一定要積極進行，以確保教學內容和教學歷程的品質，否則空有那麼多大學院校的畢業生，企業界卻一直抱怨找不到可用的人才，好像政府對高教普及的投資都浪費掉了！
在研究型大學的這一端，政府近幾年來的經費挹注有顯著成長，競爭性的撥款方式確使幾個重點大學的研究產出增加不少，但對教學品質並無相對提昇的批評聲浪，卻是一波又一波到來。對這些批評，所有的研究型大學當然應該虛心聆聽以求改進，但令我感到遺憾的是，這些批評常常是基於一些似是而非的假設，並沒有足夠的實證數據予以支持。例如，研究做得很好的教授，卻可能被視為教學不力的指標。這是很不公平的指控，也許有少數個案是如此，但對大多數的傑出研究教授，教學和研究是一體的，他們的研究之所以能傑出，因為他們跟緊世界研究的主流，有很好而且開闊的視野，也有很嚴謹的研究步驟，更有足夠的分析能力，從數據中提煉出精彩的論點，當他們把這些能力及經驗轉換在教學的層次上，往往被認為是最佳的良師風範，所以教學相長其實是常理，好的研究者才是好教授的基本條件。可是，像我這樣的看法也不過是一種意見而已，發揮不了大作用的！
所以，當我們談教育改革時，人人都自認為是專家，大家總是從個人的經驗或親友的「故事」去表達對當前教育裡某些措施的不滿，也習慣從自己的認知去提出改革的方案，殊不知別人的經驗也許不同，而片面的故事其實是有很多反例的！越是權威人士，越打不破這種自以為是的個人意識。也因此，對於我們的教改，各地的良言美意一籮筐，但推不動的方案也一大堆，大家都在努力做事，社會的不滿卻越積越高。怎麼辦？近年來，歐美的教育研究已經開始反省，結論是：一切要回歸到以「證據為基礎」（evidence-based）的教育改革方案，才能去除這些因「個人意見」而設事的缺陷！
郭位校長的書，就是以科學態度與方法進行研究，把大學裡教學和研究相關的因素明列出來，以龐大樣本所得的數據，加上精細先進的多變項統計分析，然後從所得的結果中去釐清研究能力和教學品質的互動關係。這是個非常精密複雜的互動關係，不但和專長領域的性質有關，也會隨教學情境和學生身心發展而產生複雜的動態變化。這些歷程唯有靠科學的研究方法，以證據為基礎的論述和因地制宜的行動研究方案（action research program），才能見微知著，設計出有效的改革方案，絕不可以再回到過去以「權威人士」的意見為主，只憑某些自以為是的專家教授們說了就算的做法。郭校長和他同事的這一本大作，實在是做了最好的示範。
在很多不同的場合，我都一再向大學的教授們及高等教育的研究者介紹這本書，就是要「讓證據說話」的概念與作為深入大家心中，因為我個人認為教育歷程的研究是一個科學的專業領域，以證據為基礎的教育研究才是教改所必須且是唯一的途徑！