On Monday, Tracey Burns visited Leerpunt, and a large part of her professional life so far has been devoted to looking at trends that influence education. It was a strong contribution that could feed the idea that we live in times of change. But… that is, of course, a huge cliché, and she presented it… Read More Why education needs stability in a changing world
As I wrote yesterday, last week I spent time with several other researchers (and policymakers too, by the way) thinking about the worldwide decline in performance on PISA, PIRLS, TIMSS… Strikingly little attention was paid to teaching and instruction, by the way. I deliberately did not write “learning outcomes”. This is because that touches on… Read More Are PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS still fit for our times?
hIt is a complaint I sometimes make on this blog or on stage: quite a lot has already been written and researched about homework. Often, the discussion revolves around a fairly simple question: does homework work? Or, sometimes, a slightly more concrete one: how much homework should we assign, from what age does it make… Read More Another kind of study on homework
Maybe you’ve forgotten about the little turtle, but ever since Logo by Seymour Papert, programming has found its way into curricula in many countries. Sometimes that little turtle has become rather more real, with robots now also appearing in STEM classes. Little side note: one of my children once remarked that this seems to happen… Read More A lot of research, little guidance: what do we know about programming and robots in the classroom?
One of the major concerns surrounding generative AI in education relates to writing, or rather, to the assessment of writing. If pupils and students can have their texts written by ChatGPT or another AI, how can we still be sure whether they have actually thought for themselves? This has already led to all kinds of… Read More Does writing really help us think? A response to the New York Times opinion piece by Joe Cruz
One of the most striking conclusions from PISA 2025 may be wrong. A new analysis suggests that the apparent sharp decline among more advantaged students may largely be the result of a change in measurement. It was one of the most important new insights from PISA earlier this month: it is now mainly children from… Read More One of the most striking conclusions from PISA 2025 may be wrong!
This research has been sitting in an open tab in my browser for a while. I read it back when the post about the umbrella review of fifteen meta-analyses on project-based learning was published, but I didn’t want to write a similar post two days in a row. At the time, the conclusion was quite… Read More Gamification shows once again that the question ‘what works?’ is too simple.
The most difficult thing in education is not transfer, although it comes close. Nor is it trying to get rid of learning styles, although I’m still doing my very best. No, the most difficult thing in education is scaling up. Many doomed stories in education usually start with someone who looks at conventional schools and… Read More Schools are not apps. Why do we keep forgetting this?
When you read a scientific article, research can sometimes seem like a remarkably emotionless process. First, the researchers formulate a hypothesis. Next, they conduct an experiment. Then they analyse the data and draw a conclusion. Anyone who does research themselves knows, of course, that it rarely feels that way. On the contrary, it is a… Read More In the scientist’s mind
I don’t like to rant. I always want to keep things as nuanced as possible. I’m the good cop (my dear friend Paul is often the bad cop). But now I need to write a third rant about Alpha School (check here and here for the first two). But this time it’s not about the… Read More Third time’s the charm. Here it is… a third rant about Alpha School