Does Private Tutoring Actually Work? A Global Study Says: Barely

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

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Do Generational Differences at Work Really Exist?

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?

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What We Get Wrong About IQ And Intelligence

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

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The PISA-paradox: Why richer countries do not automatically become better at education

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

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Does competition increase educational inequality? A new study offers a surprising answer.

When I read this paper on Saturday, it genuinely made me stop and think. Nathalie Aerts, Thijs Bol and Eddie Brummelman started from a theory that has become increasingly influential over the past few years. According to the Social Class–Academic Context Mismatch theory, competitive school environments should disadvantage students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. That was… Read More Does competition increase educational inequality? A new study offers a surprising answer.

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Funny on Sunday: “…it doesn’t sound good” #birds #bees

When I saw this cartoon on Facebook, I just had to smile! Check here for more Funny on Sunday. (and if you’re wondering what song I have been humming since I saw this cartoon, scroll down!)  

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The Multimodal Learning Confusion

A Substack post that suddenly seemed to appear everywhere in my feed led me to an interesting systematic review recently published in Review of Education. The authors did something that, surprisingly, had never been done before. They searched for experimental evidence supporting the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies, a framework that has become highly influential in some… Read More The Multimodal Learning Confusion

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How should parents be included in teacher education?

Few people would disagree that strong partnerships between schools and families matter. Research has consistently linked family–teacher collaboration to better academic outcomes, improved wellbeing, and stronger relationships between schools and communities. Yet many beginning teachers report feeling underprepared to work with families. That is especially true when working with multilingual families or families of children… Read More How should parents be included in teacher education?

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Do We Actually Learn Better From Mistakes?

Learning from mistakes is a topic that has come up several times on this blog. A new study in the Journal of Educational Psychology once again shows that the answer is more nuanced than a simple yes-or-no. What did you expect? But keep reading, because the practical implications are more interesting than you might think.… Read More Do We Actually Learn Better From Mistakes?

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Follow-up: Rising Perfectionism and Declining School Performance? They Are Not Necessarily Contradictory

After my previous blog about the rise in perfectionism, I received the same question several times: how does that fit with the declining school performance we are seeing in many countries? If young people are becoming increasingly perfectionistic, shouldn’t they actually be performing better? It sounds logical, but it is based on a misunderstanding. Perfectionism… Read More Follow-up: Rising Perfectionism and Declining School Performance? They Are Not Necessarily Contradictory

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