Thread by @ProfDanielMuijs

1. Some first thoughts on the EEF cognitive science review. #EEF #cogpsy educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summa…

2. Firstly, it’s a thorough piece of work, methodologically sound and kudos to the authors for going through the wealth of papers here.

3. Secondly, the clear conclusion is that cog psy approaches are pretty well supported, more so than most of what we do in education (with explicit instruction and phonics as the main exceptions that have even stronger support).

4. So why then all the hot takes saying this somehow debunks those approaches? Giving people the benefit of the doubt (not always deservedly so) I would say this comes from a misunderstanding of the nature of most evidence in education research.

5. The main weaknesses of the evidence base are found across ed res, and are in many cases are a lot less serious here than in other fields.

6. A recurrent issue mentioned in the review is lack of subject coverage. Maths, science and English dominate. This is a problem, but one that is pretty much universal in ed res.

7. We simply don’t have rigorous research in most subjects. But cog psy has an advantage here. Learning is a pretty universal process, so it is more likely that strategies will transfer.

8. The second major issue is that not all studies are consistent. In most cases the majority show positive results, but there are also some neutral and even some negatives.

9. What’s going on here (other than study design)? Probably largely intervention design and implementation. In education how something is done is usually as important (if not more so) than what the actual intervention is. Implementation matters, and this will affect impact.

10. Some other issues: not all strategies have been studied with all age groups. This of course matters as we can’t assume equal effects across ages. But again, this is true in a lot of ed res.

11. In some areas volume of studies is small. This research is quite hard & not cheap, so unfortunately that is reflected in volumes. But better a smaller number of robust studies than yet another single-school case study in which everyone tells us how great they are.

12. Overall this is a body of work based on firmer scientific foundations than most. And that matters. As even though transfer from the lab to the classroom is not at all a given, at least we are building on firm foundations here.

13. Also, this is a much more rigorous body of work than most in education. That does probably mean that results are going to be less unambiguously positive than much ed res which uses methodologies that are unfalsifiable.

14. This therefore remains one of the most promising avenues of work in education. Yes, we need more research ( don’t we always). No, promising approaches won’t work every time in every classroom.

15. But overall I was encouraged by these findings. So to all teachers and researchers trying to use cog psy based approaches, keep going. You are on the right track.