I do not have a crystal ball. However, based on what I learned last week, 2026 could well become the year of the Brain Economy. When major players such as the OECD, UNESCO, the World Economic Forum and McKinsey begin to embrace an idea. The chances are real. So what exactly is the Brain Economy?… Read More Why the Brain Economy Could Become the Next Big Policy Idea
Anyone who follows education and psychology – and yes, if you read this blog regularly, I do mean you – knows that some research questions sound almost playful but end up revealing something quite fundamental. The British Psychological Society recently highlighted one of those cases in their Digest, pointing to a new and rather ambitious… Read More Cool is Rarely Virtuous. And the Reverse Is Also True
MIT has just published a guide on AI in schools, A Guide to AI in Schools: Perspectives for the Perplexed. Thanks to Remco Pijpers for pointing me to it. Right in the introduction, Justin Reich writes that a guide to AI in 2025 is akin to a manual for aviation in 1905: just after the… Read More A Guide for the Perplexed: What MIT’s New AI Guidebook Can Teach Schools
This is a longer post about a thorny topic – one that passes through climate change, psychology, and even a comedian – before arriving at a pedagogical and democratic question that I can summarise as follows: Do we want young people to think critically and speak their minds, or do we mainly want them to… Read More Do You Really Want Students to Think Critically?
Andreas Schleicher – yes, the man behind the PISA tests – recently wrote that vocational education “has a great future”.That’s a remarkably upbeat message from someone we usually quote when talking about declining reading skills or falling maths scores. And to be fair, I share his optimism – though perhaps for slightly different reasons. In… Read More Vocational education has a brilliant future (I’m not saying that — Andreas Schleicher is)
A small scene in an ordinary household. A parent checks their daughter’s screen time and discovers she’s spent six hours in a single day chatting through an app with a friendly-looking icon — Polybuzz. What looks innocent enough turns out to be conversations with AI characters based on her favourite K-pop band. What follows is… Read More The Frictionless Friendship: What AI Companions Are Really Teaching Our Children
Few international studies paint as complete a picture of teaching as the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). The 2024 edition was published last night, just past midnight, and is based on data from more than fifty countries. The report arrives at a moment when the profession is both under pressure and in transition.… Read More TALIS 2024: the state of teaching around the world
If the 264 million students enrolled in higher education worldwide were to form a country, it would be the fifth-largest nation in the world. More than half of its inhabitants would be women, the majority would live in Asia, and English would be the dominant language. That is the picture painted by Dan Garisto in… Read More The university as a country of its own
Imagine this: a model like GPT-5 achieves top results on medical exams. It outperforms benchmarks in leading journals and seems ready to support doctors. Sounds impressive. However, as soon as the tests become a little more demanding, the façade crumbles. That is the message of a new paper from Microsoft Research, tellingly titled The Illusion… Read More The end of the illusion? Microsoft punctures its own medical AI hype
The academic year is starting again: lecture halls are filling up, syllabi are being handed out, and coffee is being rushed down. But there are dark clouds on the horizon. I’ve written before about how AI is reshaping science. Every lecturer knows how tools like ChatGPT are putting traditional assessment systems under pressure. As if… Read More Is College Still Worth It? Rising Doubts in the U.S. and What It Means for Universities Worldwide