California has been at the forefront of adopting modern pedological science
It's not science, it's art. As a physics professor I can definitely say that a large number of new pedagogical methods are tested on students without much, if any, research backing them up. Even when an attempt at measuring objective outcomes is made it rarely, if ever uses a control group where two instructors teach two equivalent groups of students in two different ways. Instead it usually uses subjective interviews with students which are then analyzed in an attempt to extract some degree of mildly objective data.
Even when you have something that seems to have credible research backing it someone else can try the method only to find that it completely fails for them. The conclusion I have arrived at over the years is that education is far more of an art than it is a science. Indeed, I think a lot of it is based on your enthusiasm as a teacher for the method and subject matter. If you see or develop a cool new idea for teaching something then your enthusiasm is picked up by students who then enjoy the material more and generally learn more.