When I ranted last year about the two-hour school day that costs $65,000, I assumed, or better, I hoped, I was reacting to the usual hype cycle. Big promises. Glossy videos. Confident founders. And that familiar “schools are broken, we fixed them” vibe. What I did not have back then was a detailed look at… Read More The $65,000 AI School, Revisited: Inside the AI Classroom That Promised Too Much
I confess: when I first read the title of this article (“A national megastudy shows that email nudges to elementary school teachers boost student math achievement”) and the accompanying press release, alarm bells immediately started ringing. Big words, big numbers, big promises. And one well-known name in the author list, Angela Duckworth, has previously been… Read More Can emails improve mathematics education? Big words, small effects
Research on (neuro)myths in education usually brings gloomy news. Teachers widely believe in learning styles, left- and right-brain dominance, brain gym, and other persistent misconceptions. And each new study seems to reinforce the same conclusion: we may know better, but we do not do better. Recently, however, a study appeared that cautiously goes against the… Read More Some Good News About Neuromyths in Education
It can feel as if AI has suddenly become the problem. As if hallucinations, incorrect citations, and superficial texts only appeared with the arrival of ChatGPT and its peers. From my perspective as an education mythbuster, that story does not quite hold. Poor or incorrect citations are not an AI problem. They have always been… Read More Is AI the Problem, or Does AI Reveal What Was Already Broken?
At the end of last year, a review paper published in Science attracted a great deal of attention. The article by Arne Güllich and colleagues brings together research on the development of exceptional performance in domains such as elite sport, science, music and chess. It draws a striking conclusion: early high achievers are rarely the… Read More What a Science paper on top performance does and does not tell us
The pattern has become familiar. A solid cohort study appears. A large sample. Careful analyses. Plenty of control variables. And then, before the dust has settled, the conclusion is already in place: less screen time, better language. A recent British study on screen time and language development in two-year-olds fits this pattern perfectly. Not because… Read More Screen Time as a Scapegoat
If you see the turtle, you are right-brained. If you see the camel, you are left-brained (to be clear: no, you’re not) Found this gem here. Check here for more Funny on Sunday.
Anyone who has ever sat in an online meeting with an email open on the side, a document that needed to be checked “quickly”, and perhaps a chat message popping up, will recognise the feeling. You are busy, but at the end of the meeting, you mainly feel tired. A new study by Frontzkowski and… Read More Why Multitasking During Video Meetings Leads to Fatigue and Worse Performance
When you say in education debates that something “works according to research”, you usually get approving nods from one corner and sceptical grumbles from another. Especially when a meta-analysis is involved, after all, that is supposed to be the top of the evidence pyramid. Combine many studies, average their findings, weigh them carefully and report… Read More How Reliable Are Meta-Analyses in Education? A Closer Look at What They Do (and Don’t) Tell Us
The idea pops up regularly in discussions about equity: would it help if boys were taught by men and girls by women? In theory, what we call gender matching sounds logical. Think of role models, fewer stereotypical expectations, and more recognition. But in practice, this has long been a difficult question. We already touched on… Read More No, Boys Probably Do Not Learn Better From Male Teachers