There you have it, the last blog post of this school year, this academic year, this season. For years, I have made it a habit to look back at the end of such a chapter. Perhaps revisit the most-read posts or reflect on what stood out. But I must confess that I didn’t feel like… Read More Before My Annual Blogging Break: A Note About Music
In recent years, you have probably heard more and more about the so-called “boy problem” in education. The argument is that boys are already at a disadvantage when they start school. They are said to find it harder to sit still and to lag behind in language and executive functioning, while primary schools have become… Read More Is school really failing boys?
Great as always by The Exploding Heads. Check here for more Funny on Sunday.
One of the things teachers often hope for when it comes to AI in education is that it might finally reduce the time they spend providing feedback on writing assignments. Good feedback is one of the most powerful ways to promote learning, yet it also remains one of the most time-consuming parts of a teacher’s… Read More What AI does better than teachers. And especially what it doesn’t.
It is a well-known phenomenon in educational research and policy. An educational intervention works brilliantly in ten schools. Teachers are enthusiastic, the results are promising, and researchers report a positive effect. The next step seems obvious: roll it out to a hundred or even a thousand schools. Perhaps even make it the norm. And that… Read More From Successful Pilots to Hundreds of Schools: How Do You Scale an Educational Intervention?
Whenever I come across the words chess and practice hours in a paper, I immediately think of the late Anders Ericsson. Chances are, many readers will think of Malcolm Gladwell instead. That is hardly surprising as Gladwell made the idea famous in his book ‘Outliers’. The problem is that he simplified Ericsson’s work beyond recognition… Read More Was Anders Ericsson (partially) right after all? A new chess study reopens the deliberate practice debate
Shadow education is the collective term for paid private tutoring, exam preparation, or private lessons outside regular school. Worldwide, it has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. Parents invest enormous sums, often believing that extra lessons will automatically lead to better results. A new international study by Cao and Huo casts serious doubt on that assumption… Read More Does Private Tutoring Actually Work? A Global Study Says: Barely
Young people no longer want to work. Or is it that they study less because they are working too much? That is also possible. Or perhaps they are simply taking better care of themselves and their work-life balance. Or perhaps not. Many clichés circulate about these themes, but what do the hard data say? I… Read More Do Generational Differences at Work Really Exist?
We’ve written about this before in More Urban Myths about Learning and Education and The Psychology of Great Teaching, but I keep being struck by how often the same misconceptions about intelligence resurface. Then again, perhaps that’s not surprising. Intelligence and intelligence research have been provoking strong reactions for well over a century, something I have… Read More What We Get Wrong About IQ And Intelligence
It almost sounds self-evident. Richer countries have better schools. So as countries become wealthier, student achievement should improve as well. A new study using more than twenty years of PISA data suggests the picture is rather more complicated. In this paper, Satoshi Araki makes a distinction that is surprisingly rare. Instead of simply comparing countries,… Read More The PISA-paradox: Why richer countries do not automatically become better at education