So we have the Jason Arday case. Is academia now rotten to the bone, as I’ve read in some places, or is it an exception? Well, I think both statements are incorrect. First of all, Arday, although a spectacular case, is not an exception. Academia has seen a steady stream of high-profile scandals over the… Read More The Jason Arday Case Doesn’t Mean Academia Is Rotten (I Think)
“See? Humans actually can multitask.” I’ve had that message sent to me several times over the past month, usually by people who know I occasionally challenge the multitasking myth. The reason was a new study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. The researchers trained participants more than 30,000 times to categorise novel, artificially morphed… Read More This Study Does Not Show That We Can Multitask
Teacher shortages remain one of the biggest challenges facing education across many countries around the world. The debate quickly turns to salaries or workload. Here in Flanders, it often centres on issues such as tenure and job security. These are certainly important topics. But a new review by Kenneth Leithwood and colleagues suggests that we… Read More Why Teachers Stay Has Less to Do with Salary Than You Might Think
Let’s start with the obvious: generative AI is rapidly entering classrooms, whether we like it or not. Recent surveys show that many teachers are already using AI, often to prepare lessons, create classroom activities, or generate tests. That makes sense, and an earlier Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) evaluation suggested that this does not necessarily come… Read More AI Can Make Teachers More Productive. But What About The Students?
Montessori remains one of the world’s most widely discussed educational approaches. For some, it is almost synonymous with high-quality education. For others, it is primarily a collection of appealing ideas supported by limited evidence. That makes every new research synthesis worth paying attention to. A new preregistered meta-analysis by Samuel León and colleagues sets out… Read More Montessori Under Scrutiny: What the Largest Review to Date Really Tells Us
Earlier this year, I wrote about the large MetaSENse meta-analysis on interventions for students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The conclusions were encouraging. Targeted interventions can make a substantial difference, averaging around five months of additional learning. At the same time, the review also showed that many popular interventions have not yet been… Read More Which ingredients make interventions for students with SEND effective?
I have been following the expanding Jason Arday case for a while now. For those enjoying some time off, here’s the story in brief. Jason Arday, a professor at the University of Cambridge, has come under scrutiny after allegations that parts of his academic work contained citation errors, unsupported claims and possible plagiarism. The first… Read More Autism deserves better than being used to defend sloppy academic work.
When discussing educational inequality, one message comes up time and again: if you really want to make a difference, you need to invest in the earliest years of life. That idea has been popularised in part by the work of economist James Heckman, who showed that investments in young children often generate particularly high social… Read More Are the early years all that matter? New study challenges a popular idea
I’m usually not someone who gravitates towards pessimism or endless talk about the decline of civilisation. And I’m not about to do that here either. This isn’t going to be another post about AI suddenly becoming sentient and wiping out humanity. But… Over the past few months, I’ve started noticing that AI is already damaging… Read More The Quiet Damage AI Is Already Doing