Distractions consume more learning time than we tend to think.

Here's the lowdown:

↓ We (and our students) can only pay attention to and think about a very few number of things at once.

Managing this precious attention is important because what our students attend to is what they end up learning about.

🔥 15 hottest edu-research papers from the last 15 weeks:

(all open source 🔓)

↓ 1/ Study on teacher enthusiasm

→ finds that teachers who see themselves as enthusiastic use more positive lingo, but students don’t always pick up on this.

bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bj…

The most important idea when it comes to AI & education:

WHOEVER DOES THE THINKING GETS THE LEARNING

More:

↓ AI is coming—thick & fast.

LLM’s like ChatGPT are outperforming humans at an ever-increasing range of tasks, their adoption is spreading quicker than any technology before, and they are the least intelligent they will ever be.

Many students recognise the power of spacing their study.

However, few manage to make it work consistently in practice.

@examstudyexpert suggests that spacing rituals can help students overcome this knowing-doing gap.

↓ Our brains are selective when it comes to building knowledge.

We typically forget most academic content we encounter... unless we take proactive steps to remember it.

One of the most effective ways to drive effective inclusion is to make our teaching ‘accessible by default’.

Let's dig into what that means:

↓ ‘Accessible design’ is a well-established concept in other sectors.

Ramps in buildings, braille in lifts, websites that work with screen readers—these all help more people access what's already there.

Classrooms should be no different.

The double-edged sword of SEND labels:

↓ Labels play an important role in education. They help students access targeted support and guide us in responding to particular needs.

However, they can also have unintended downsides—they are a double-edged sword.

*Diagnostic overshadowing* can thwart inclusive teaching.

What's useful for teachers to know:

↓ Diagnostic overshadowing is a term originating in medical contexts (and introduced to me by @Barker_J).

It describes the phenomenon where doctors inadvertently place too much emphasis on a patient's diagnosis, overshadowing other significant health concerns.

Two core ideas underpin effective inclusive teaching:

1. Cognitive similarity
2. Instructional sensitivity

Let’s dig into both…

↓ IDEA 1

The first idea—cognitive similarity—helps us understand that:

→ the way people learn is more similar than it is different.

It’s important to consider *measurement error* when assessing learning.

Otherwise, there is potential for misplaced confidence:

↓ Reliability refers to the ability of a measure to produce a similar result under similar conditions.

If I weigh 70kg and my scales always show 70kg, they are reliable. Lovely.

Maximising assessment validity:

(An attempt to make sense of this stuff)

↓ So...

Validity refers to the extent that any inferences we draw from an assessment are a true reflection of reality.

If I weigh 70kg and my scales always show 70kg, then we might say that they are valid.

To harness norms, accentuate the positive.

A short thread:

↓ Norms are the unwritten rules that govern the behaviour and attitudes of a group.

They are so powerful that they often override more formal rules or policies.

16 must-know edu-research papers from the last 16 weeks:

(all open source 🔓)

↓ 1/ Study exploring ‘warm-strict’ teaching

→ finds that combining deep care and high expectations helps to guide learning and build strong relationships

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Norms are more powerful than rules. How to leverage this idea in school:

↓ Norms are the unwritten rules that govern the behaviour and attitudes of a group (such as a society or school).

They are so powerful that they tend to override more formal rules or policies. Which is why, in schools, we ignore them at our peril.

The power of norms arises from two main mechanisms:

40 of most fascinating edu-threads from the last 4 months:

↓ 1/ @C_Hendrick on the history and evidence around open-plan classrooms

https://x.com/C_Hendrick/status/1815721436029309298

A quick thread on 'retrieval resistance':

(co-authored with ace memory psychologist William Wadsworth @examstudyexpert)

↓ @examstudyexpert Retrieval practice has the potential to be powerful for revision.

However, despite our efforts to educate students on this approach, it isn't always embraced wholeheartedly.

And so, we must also put in place steps to overcome what Wadsworth calls 'retrieval resistance'.

(I tried to post this thread a couple of weeks ago but I didn't get to finish it smh)

For the last 8 years, over at @Steplab_co, we've been working on a project to codify HIGHLY EFFECTIVE TEACHING.

A long-ish summary of what we've learned:

↓ @Steplab_co One of the essential ingredients of effective professional development is the provision of concrete & granular teaching 'strategies'.

These can be used as examples of 'what good looks like', which teachers can translate for their context, and practise in a productive way.

CONTINGENCY BLINDNESS

(aka why graded lesson observations don't work)

A mega-geeky thread I've been sitting on for 5 years:

↓ Imagine we wanted to create a system for evaluating doctors' effectiveness.

Suppose we designed a rubric outlining all the actions effective doctors typically perform:

→ Prescribe painkillers
→ Refer to specialists
→ Order blood tests
→ Conduct physical exams
→ etc.

Q. How does time spent in direction instruction vs peer interaction vs practice/assessment impact learning? And does the answer differ by subject?

Burgess et al analysed the performance and data from 250+ teachers to answer these Qs.

Here's what they found:

↓ We know that teacher choices affect student learning and lives.

But we know less about exactly *how* the 'macro' moves of the classroom predict learning.

When multiple teachers within a school all use the same routines, special things happen.

A short thread on collective acceleration:

↓ First up, routines have the potential to be powerful tools for student learning, feelings of belonging, and responsive teaching.

However, their power is only unleashed once they become automated.

For the last 8 years, over at @Steplab_co, we've been working on a project to codify HIGHLY EFFECTIVE TEACHING.

A long and geeky thread on what we've learned:

↓ @Steplab_co One of the essential ingredients of effective professional development is the provision of concrete & granular teaching 'strategies'.

These can be used as examples of 'what good looks like', which teachers can translate for their context, and practise in a productive way.

Routines are valuable, but only once they have become automated.

Until then, we must treat them as an investment:

↓ Routines are sequences of action which are prompted by a cue, all of which happens with minimal thought.

They have the potential to enhance student learning, confidence, and belonging.

And free up teacher cognitive capacity to monitor learning and be more responsive.