And no, this does not mean I will suddenly start writing about the big comparative study the OECD will publish today at 9.30 a.m. You will also be able to read all sorts of things about it here. By the way, it is just a little strange to be sitting here writing something when the… Read More This blog is not about PISA… but about a (slightly smaller) study on money, worries and our brains
These are difficult times for people who do science, blog about science, and defend science. I do all three. Daniel Muijs wrote this blog post over the weekend defending educational research. He starts by acknowledging that there are indeed problems (certainly), but that there is also a lot of good research being done (also certainly).… Read More Defending science means talking about its problems
Via Dan Willingham, I discovered this new report by the American Psychological Association on children, adolescents, and educational technology. Dan was one of the authors. Much of what is in the report will not surprise regular readers of this blog. Take e.g. the finding that engagement is not the same as learning. This reminded me… Read More A new APA report on technology in education: learning and wellbeing
There is a certain irony in the article and study I want to discuss with you today. I had to think pretty hard to understand it. No, really, this study by Sergiou and colleagues has proven to be an incredibly difficult read. However, it addresses something essential in the ongoing discussion of active and passive… Read More An opportunity to think is not the same as thinking
Yesterday, Paul Kirschner responded to my blog post discussing research I was critical of, ending with the words: “Again, lots of time and money invested to learn virtually nothing.” Paul has a point. And this new umbrella review will not make him, or you as a reader, feel any more hopeful. Imagine fifteen meta-analyses, together… Read More 15 meta-analyses on project-based learning tell us… virtually nothing”
This post is unique on this blog. Yesterday, I simply could not find anything ‘bloggable’ in my RSS feeds. There was nothing among my Scholar suggestions and nothing on EurekAlert that I had not already blogged about. So, in the end, for the first time I asked AI whether there were any new studies that… Read More Letting students assess each other’s work? The teacher remains crucial
I once did research myself into what makes a teacher a ‘real teacher’ in the eyes of their students. This was and is not an easy question. The question ‘What makes someone a good teacher?’ is also one of those questions almost everyone thinks they have an answer to, but the discussions start once you… Read More What makes a good teacher? A lot of research confirms what you probably already thought
We all start life from unequal positions. James Heckman once argued that being born is the greatest source of inequality. And, in a way, education is one of our attempts to undo some of this. Now suppose children receive a good preschool education at age 4 and, as a result, build an advantage over children… Read More Can Better Education Make an Earlier Advantage Look Smaller?
I want to discuss a new study on PIAAC, the lesser-known adult sibling of PISA. PIAAC measures, among other things, literacy and numeracy among adults, while PISA assesses related skills among 15-year-olds. There was something in the Flemish results in 2024 that fascinated me. I wrote on my Dutch blog: By 2012, average PISA scores… Read More PISA scores fall. PIAAC scores don’t. How can that be?
This blog has an AI problem. No, not because it was written by AI (although I translated it with AI’s help). Or rather, I have an AI research problem. The problem is that I am increasingly unsure which new studies on AI and education are still worth discussing here. I have a monthly podcast in… Read More This blog has an AI problem