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?
After my previous blog about the rise in perfectionism, I received the same question several times: how does that fit with the declining school performance we are seeing in many countries? If young people are becoming increasingly perfectionistic, shouldn’t they actually be performing better? It sounds logical, but it is based on a misunderstanding. Perfectionism… Read More Follow-up: Rising Perfectionism and Declining School Performance? They Are Not Necessarily Contradictory
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?
I have written about educational inequality many times over the years. That is hardly surprising. Differences between students remain one of the most-discussed topics in education policy, and I will gladly admit that it is also close to my heart. At the same time, it is one of the most difficult issues to talk about.… Read More What Two New Studies Teach Us About Educational Inequality
I have often been critical of open spaces for learning, and for the record, that criticism has been grounded in research. That does not mean I have stopped following the evidence. Research evolves, findings become more nuanced, and sometimes, as in this study, qualitative research offers new insights into familiar debates. Kreeta Niemi did not… Read More Architecture Is Not Pedagogy
In recent years, I have regularly heard that AI systems work with attention. It is no coincidence that this word reappears in the title of the famous article that made the current generation of language models possible: Attention is All You Need, a paper published 9 years ago today. But how comparable is that attention actually to human… Read More Does AI have an attention problem?
Board games have made a remarkable comeback in recent years. I have noticed game shops and board game cafés popping up in my own area. They have also appeared increasingly often in educational research, particularly in studies exploring ways to support executive functions in primary school. That is hardly surprising. Good board games are affordable,… Read More Today We’re Playing a Game… in Class?
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?
Co-teaching and team teaching are a bit of a personal frustration of mine. They are popular topics, yet there is relatively little research on them worldwide. Fortunately, that is starting to change in Flanders. In 2025, I wrote about a study on the possible impact of team teaching on student learning. Based on the publication… Read More What Do Students Think About Team Teaching?