We remain remarkably stubborn in our belief that learning and development can be improved by adding something “on the side.” An intervention, a programme, a training. Something psychological, something cognitive, something layered on top of regular education. Think of self-efficacy, executive functions, or motivation programmes. Somewhere in all of this sits an implicit promise: if… Read More Stop adding interventions. Start improving teaching.

“Learning needs to be fun” quickly turns into a familiar caricature: classrooms where everything has to be enjoyable, where substance gives way to entertainment. Bring it up in a debate, and people immediately know what you mean. And what they think of it. But in pushing back against that caricature, we may have dropped a… Read More Not everything has to be fun. But joy in learning still matters.

Imagine two students with similar difficulties. One receives a diagnosis placing him on the autism spectrum. The other gets a label of an intellectual disability. The consequences of both diagnoses can be significant: different expectations, a different trajectory, different opportunities. But what if that difference does not lie only in the student, but also in… Read More When Language Becomes Diagnosis: Multilingual Learners in Special Education