Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

No two people are the same, not even identical twins. Yes, even two people with exactly the same genes, growing up in exactly the same household, going to the same schools and possibly in the same classrooms with the same teachers, and so forth aren’t the same.. This means two things. First, our genes play a large role in how well we do at school with identical twins scoring very similarly with respect to learning and achievement (Krapohl et al, 2014; Shakeshaft et al, 2013). Second, even identical twins are not the same when it comes to learning and achievement. If this is the case, what about a ‘normal’ class with 20-30 different children? The fact that learners are different and don’t always have the same level of prior knowledge can lead to problems when they need to learn something new. But there’s a…