In recent years, you have probably heard more and more about the so-called “boy problem” in education. The argument is that boys are already at a disadvantage when they start school. They are said to find it harder to sit still and to lag behind in language and executive functioning, while primary schools have become… Read More Is school really failing boys?
One of the things teachers often hope for when it comes to AI in education is that it might finally reduce the time they spend providing feedback on writing assignments. Good feedback is one of the most powerful ways to promote learning, yet it also remains one of the most time-consuming parts of a teacher’s… Read More What AI does better than teachers. And especially what it doesn’t.
It is a well-known phenomenon in educational research and policy. An educational intervention works brilliantly in ten schools. Teachers are enthusiastic, the results are promising, and researchers report a positive effect. The next step seems obvious: roll it out to a hundred or even a thousand schools. Perhaps even make it the norm. And that… Read More From Successful Pilots to Hundreds of Schools: How Do You Scale an Educational Intervention?
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
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
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?
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
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.
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
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?