Should We Communicate the Uncertainty of Educational Effects to Teachers?

There is a growing effort to inform teachers about the effects of various educational practices; however, the uncertainty associated with these effects is often very large and rarely reported. As a result, teachers may be unaware that the actual effects of interventions can often deviate substantially from what is reported. Should we communicate the uncertainty of educational effects to teachers? Doing so could support their decision-making, yet research from other fields (e.g., in risk communication) suggests that reporting uncertainty can be perceived negatively. We conducted two pre-registered studies to examine this question. Reporting uncertainty did not impact the perceived understandability of the information presented but decreased the perceived effectiveness of an intervention, suggesting that reporting uncertainty may influence teachers’ decisions to implement an educational practice in their classrooms. However, we also found that reporting uncertainty leads to a decrease in trust in those who communicated the information, a particularly worrying observation, given the ubiquity and magnitude of uncertainty in educational research. We discuss the implications of these findings for research communicators, research evaluators, and initial teacher education.