Young children learn an enormous amount through imitation. They learn to speak, use cutlery (although some seem to unlearn that skill as teenagers š), kick a ball, or tie their shoelaces by watching others and then trying it themselves. Watching and practising is a remarkably powerful way to learn. We also know that young children… Read More Do Young Children Learn Through More Than Imitation?
It has almost become an accepted truth, with social media bans becoming increasingly popular among politicians. Young people spend more and more time on social media. Mental health appears to be declining. So one must be causing the other. Over the past few years, numerous studies have reported an association between heavier social media use… Read More Does Time on Social Media Predict Later Mental Health? A Five-Year Study Suggests Not
Who would you say suffered the most from the COVID school closures? The obvious answer would be: students from the most disadvantaged families. And that’s true… but only partly. A new international study based on PISA data shows that the answer depends heavily on the country where students went to school during the pandemic. In… Read More Who Paid the Highest Price for COVID School Closures?
One of the most difficult questions after a divorce is undoubtedly this: where should the children live? Is it better for them to divide their time between both parents? Or is it preferable for them to live primarily with one parent? For an individual family, this can be an almost impossible decision. More broadly, it… Read More Is Joint Custody Better for Children? A Strong New Study Offers Fresh Evidence
“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
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
Few people would disagree that strong partnerships between schools and families matter. Research has consistently linked familyāteacher 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?
Why are more and more young people struggling with mental health issues? It is a question that recurs regularly in the media, in policy discussions, in research, and on this blog. My message so far has been that the answer is rarely simple or straightforward. Social media, sleep deprivation, academic pressure, economic uncertainty, changing expectations,… Read More Could Rising Perfectionism Be Another Piece of the Youth Mental Health Puzzle?
In recent years, I have often written about the replication crisis in psychology. This development, which I see as a welcome correction, is difficult to separate from another longstanding feature of academic life: publish or perish. Universities still largely evaluate scientists based on their publication record. The unintended consequences of that system have is subject… Read More What Happens When Researchers Open the File Drawer?
School attendance is once again high on the agenda. Rates of absenteeism are on the rise in several countries, and the COVID-19 pandemic is often seen as an accelerator of this trend, partly because it disrupted routines and changed perceptions of school attendance. We have long known that frequent absence is linked to lower academic… Read More Education policy is family policy: what can work against school absenteeism?