A quick note: this blog post was a difficult balancing act to write. I want to make clear from the outset that a) I think mental health problems are very important, b) I think we should pay attention to them, but also c) that we need to keep a broad perspective. And Esther Yao and… Read More Well intended, but sometimes harmful? Working on mental health at school
Somewhere last week, or perhaps the week before, someone commented on one of my blog posts on social media that perhaps we should simply stop doing most research. The reason, to be fair, was a research finding that this person didn’t particularly like. But I have to admit that I have occasionally had the same… Read More Self-regulated learning doesn’t simply improve with age
Young children learn an enormous amount through imitation. They learn to speak, use cutlery (although some seem to unlearn that skill as teenagers 😉), 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
“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
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
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
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.
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?