This statement paper provides a brief and clear background to the evidence-based medicine concept, systematic reviews and the development of clinical practice guidelines using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Eva luation (GRADE) system and focuses on their application in the fi eld of special education.Its main objective is to suggest ways of applying clinical practice guidelines in the fi eld of special education. Th e paper presents the fi rst Czech national project for developing clinical practice guidelines mainly in the fi eld of medicine and clinical practice with the main investigator being the Czech Health Research Council (AZV ČR). Some of the guidelines prepared within the project are relevant to special educators and the paper suggests that special teachers use the recommendations in their practice and in higher education. Moreover, it proposes that it is possible and useful to develop guidelines using the rigor of the GRADE methodology as described above, for issues directly pertaining to the fi eld of special education, or education in general. In that process, it may be neces-sary to identify the challenges typical for the fi eld of education and to suggest possible solutions. Finally, recommendations for special educators, for future research and for policy-makers are formulated. Specifi cally, the paper suggests that policy-makers, such as the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, develop national strategies for spe -cial-edu cational diagnostics and intervention based on rigorous methodology as des cribed on the example of the Czech national project of guideline development in medi cine and place special focus on the ethical aspects, social impacts and values and preferences of target populations.

Czech Health Research Council Ruská 85 100 05 Prague Czech Republic

Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic Palackého nám 375 4 128 01 Praha Czech Republic

The Czech National Centre for Evidence Based Healthcare and Knowledge Translation Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses Faculty of Medicine Masaryk University Kamenice 3 625 00 Brno Czech Republic

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