As the author of "Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices," I want to extend my sincere thanks to Jim Hewitt and Nidhi Sachdeva for so powerfully building upon the foundation I laid 25 years ago. Their recent essay breathes new life into those early assertions, transforming them into a well-reasoned, deeply researched, and urgently relevant call to action for 2025 and beyond.
What makes their contribution so impactful is not only the clarity of their critique but the depth of their scholarship. They draw upon a rich body of research accumulated over the past quarter-century—research that strengthens their arguments and makes their recommendations both timely and essential. I could easily point to a dozen or more ways in which they integrate these findings to illuminate the path forward for education reform.
As they so compellingly argue, while evidence-based professions have driven remarkable progress in fields like medicine and engineering over the past 50 years, education has seen only modest gains—particularly reflected in the stagnation of NAEP scores. Their analysis underscores the urgent need to bring the same rigor and accountability to education.
It is precisely this kind of evidence-driven advocacy that inspired Kelly Butler, Reid Lyon, Linda Diamond, and me to launch the Evidence Advocacy Center. Jim and Nidhi’s work exemplifies the mission we envisioned: to empower educators with the tools, knowledge, and support they need to drive meaningful improvements in student achievement.
The public school system (as well as too many fatherless families) has become a psychological abuse system with one major goal - to retard adulthood and extend infancy 'Devouring Mother' where 28 year olds are still stalling starting life while psychologically still breast-feeding, filled with programs of how to feel, not how to think, so 'men without chests' feelie-thinkys.
I recently used AI to first list what a K-12 education should cover, then paired it down to k-8th and argued that replace most of the touchy-feelie delusional women teachers and admin with get the job done focused men teachers (and the few women that can hold even with those men) and any child that can't keep up with that rate must go away into a different 'pepper-picking' education track and not hold back the class.
At end of 8th grade a systematic test given and the top 15% get university track free of cost, it they want and if they are good enough can extend to Masters and PhD. Starting in 8th grade like was normal 150 years ago when Latin and Greek was expected to a large degree by 8th grade.
Those other 85% go into trades or such so by age 20 they may be earning a level that can marry and start a family, men at 20 marrying women at 16 for example, throw out a bunch of children that bother their parents mostly raise, and march into full productive adulthood without all the Witch-Evil Mind-raping that is standard today.
Doesn't that sound better?
-------------------
Review my pro-Life arguments to great success in 2+ key articles, God's Will.
Using Constitutional and Natural Law I argue that The State must make major changes or make illegal Abortions or Loose the monopoly on violence, and father or any adult willing may replace the father and have same legal status of father with moral, legal, natural rights and obligations to protect his child from extrajudicial murder.
"Multiverse Journal - Index Number 2221:, 11th July 2025, Court Motion: State is Obligated to Assist Father/Public Duty to Protect a Child from Abortion."
This is in the form of a letter to a Bishop but contains two main arguments. 1st extends Saint Thomas Aquinas' damage from sin, 2nd uses modern psychological method to same ends, the Key-Log that is at fault.
Ever wonder Why is this world insane and most women are so Sick?
I am in total agreement but why is almost all of the education research behind paywalls?
So often (started life as a scientist) I'm reading research or looking into the research cited but can't access more than an abstract. It is so frustrating.
I regret that the standard way to publish educational research (and research in most disciplines) is via businesses (i.e., journals) that seek compensation for access to the publications. There is an effort by some to promote "open science," one pillar of which is open access. The Center for Open Science is a good source for more information about the efforts.
In addition, some journals are adopting open access policies. In special education an example is Research in Special Education from the Alethia Society https://aletheia-society.org
I should note, though you probably know this, that authors (the researchers) do not get rich from the fees that publishers charge for access to the research reports. The authors may gain in academic reputation from the publications, but they don't get paid royalties as they would for, say, a book. In fact, journal publishers charge literally $1000s to authors that want their articles be freely accessible.
There are sites that seek to circumvent the closed access system. ResearchGate and Academia are a couple of them.
But, in answer to your question about why research is behind paywalls, I offer this simple explanation: $$.
JohnL
p.s. If you can't get access to an article on which I'm an author, write to me directly. I can send you a copy.
I agree...highly frustrating -- until about a year ago when I discovered Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/
Enter the title of the article and Google Scholar will return a listing of the desired article and others with similar names. The listing has a large column (left side) and a small column (right). Click on the left to go to the official article site, where you might get access to the full article or perhaps just the abstract. Click on the entry to the right to download the full article from an unofficial source (often a college). Together, these get me the full article about 65% of the time. If the column on the right is blank, the unofficial option is not available. In that case, enter the full title into the browser search bar...the article may be available on someone's personal blog. Final effort: email the author and request a pdf copy of the article "because I found the abstract so exciting!"
The philosophical baggage underpinning this post needs to be unpacked and revised. All knowledge comes in the form of belief. The content of belief is either true or false, and separate from that some beliefs are well-evidenced and some are not.
Belief-based is all anything is at bottom, whether it's based on evidence or not. You should call it fad-based or tradition-based or insular or something else. Data collection, data structure, and data analysis all leave room for personal bias.
If we're going to elevate educational practice, it has to start with clearer thinking.
Thanks, Josh. I agree that we all have beliefs. We use those beliefs to make decisions about our teaching. The point we could have stated more clearly in our post is that there’s a difference between having beliefs and being a belief-based profession.
We see a belief-based profession as one where personal convictions and preferences are not regularly held up to scrutiny against external scientific evidence. There are many reasons why this might happen. In some cases, people distrust science. They might prefer their own beliefs to findings that come from research. It’s also true (as several teachers in this discussion have pointed out) that it is really difficult for teachers to access and interpret the science in the first place. Either way, the result is the same: a culture in which there are fewer opportunities to have one’s beliefs challenged by research evidence, and where there’s little systemic pressure to revise or discard ineffective practices.
A science-based profession, on the other hand, is one where the members of that profession are able to access and interpret the science and are willing to entertain new beliefs. It encourages a mindset of critical inquiry, where practices are refined over time, informed by what evidence suggests is effective, not just what feels right.
I agree that science isn’t immune to bias. But what gives science its strength is its processes for detecting and correcting bias, like replication, peer review, and transparent methods. That’s the kind of culture we think education needs to move toward: one where teachers are better empowered to question and refine their beliefs based on the best available evidence.
They should distrust science. Science never moves anywhere if you don't distrust it, and it would proliferate every folkish trope in education without distrust for it -- it has often tried, and the methods we consider robust now were often once gatekept and resisted by scientists before.
Yes, distrust and skepticism is what we teach our students. It is interesting official reports from Project Follow Through give a very different narrative about DI compared to this article, eg Anderson (1977):
"QUESTION 2: DID FOLOW THROUGH RAISE POOR CHILDREN'S TEST SCORES?
If Follow Through didn't close the disadvantage gap entirely, did it at least
narrow it? Did Follow Through children score better than they would
have without the program?"
Results reported were, only 1 out of 16 DI sites did this for spelling, only 4/16 for reading & 5/16 for Maths.
Anderson reports, DI sites reached "this heroic level of performance with only a minority of its groups... Follow Through has not proved they can do it consistently."
Rather than the uncritical promotion of DI we should be asking why did DI succeed so well in some sites but not others?
Okay, so I didn't think YOUR article was "spicy," as Nidhi mentioned on LinkedIn. But then I read Douglas Carnine's article. NOW I get it. His article takes aim at a whole lot of people and institutions in education, and rightly so. It's like the Emperor who has no clothes. Thank you Jim and Nidhi for highlighting this important article. Douglas Carnine's article could have been written yesterday, sadly. In his article he notes that it took medicine more than century to become a "mature profession." Modern education is easily approaching that. Let's hope we're getting closer.
He notes that "Based on the experience of other fields, it seems likely that intense and sustained outside pressure will be needed." He continues: "The metamorphosis is often triggered by a catalyst, such as pressure from groups that are adversely affected by the poor quality of service provided by a profession." Sputnik and "A Nation at Risk" moved the needle. Wondering if Covid and Emily Hanford's, "Sold a Story" can finally get us there?
Yeah! Small changes, big changes, top down, bottom up, policy makers, educators, parents, students... We are going to need all the support and then it will be like exercising/working out...we can't ever stop working at it. We will have to keep on doing what's needed to maintain and further build strength, stamina and endurance.
Amen amen amen. Amen and amen. without subjecting specific practices to rigorous testing and experimentation and making choices based on evidence of learners’ behaviors, we’re just flying blind. This has been going on for my entire life and it’s so refreshing to see you two raising this flag again. science-based inquiry is more crucial than ever as AI is merging into every aspect of our lives.
I love what you're saying here and it's exciting to think about the potential to improve instruction and student academic success through the science of learning. However, I wonder about some of the newer instructonal approaches that our schools adopt, such as The Thinking Classroom and UDL. I feel quite sure that if I read a book promoting these approaches, there would be pages devoted to how this new approach has proven positive student outcomes; it would APPEAR to be scientifically-based with the support of scientific research. I think I would find it difficult to determine if the research was rigorous or the results were correctly interpreted. Teachers will need to be instructed on how to look at research claims with a critical eye; as a 30+ year teacher, I'm pretty sure I don't have the knowledge, skills or time to assess the veracity or validity of research claims. Preferably, school boards would have teams that fact-check each "new" initiative before teachers implement them.
For example, for The Thinking Classroom, A.I. stated that:
"The 14 practices [of the Thinking Classroom approach] are a result of extensive research in mathematics classrooms, aimed at addressing the issue of students not actively thinking during lessons."
As a teacher looking for a way to improve student learning in Math class, that might sound pretty good to me. How are we to distinguish "good" or correct research from weak research?
In addition to the good points made in the other responses to your comment, I encourage you to read Doug Carnine's comment and follow the links he provided to the project he and Linda Diamond (among many others) are creating on making evidence about effectiveness accessible. For ease, here's a link:
And the AI is picking its words carefully! To its credit, its a bit unclear what “extensive” research actually means. I could spend 10 years doing “extensive” research of a very low quality. As for the Thinking Classrooms research—they were not high-grade, well-designed studies. Small samples, lots of anecdotal evidence, and lacking some clarity in what they were actually measuring! And as for UDL, there simply isn't compelling evidence of it working well at the whole class level.
You make a great point. I don’t think many teachers have the skills to look at research critically, and I’m not sure they are open to learning about it, as a whole. Certainly some would be, but not a lot in my opinion. I think where the change can start is in teacher education programs as the authors suggest!
I love your idea about a team that fact checks initiatives. I’d love if the Ministry of Education did that, but they almost do the complete opposite. They actually promote Building Thinking Classrooms and celebrate the approach on the curriculum website! I find it deeply disappointing.
This piece is beautiful and absolutely relevant to the context today. Educators often speak about the change in attitudes and mindset but tend to ignore the data on socio-economic factors that impact motivation to learn n even student attendance at school.
So true! My first question, as i started my PGCE in secondary science, was "where's the rezearch thst supports this?" went down well! Found John Hattie's Visible Learning and started looming stuff up. Then went to a ResearchEd conference oh the joy of that w/e. Then found Daniel T Willingham's work. and i was off 😁
Research had its part to play, at the core of education, but weilding that knowledge effectively, that's the artistry that only a human can bring using the context from a roomful of children.
Sad but very true. I've watched the wheel be reinveted in my district and state too many times to count over the last 3 decades. Unfortunately, teachers don't have a say in any of this, although we're the experts. Often times, ideologies and curriculum resources aren't chosen for the benefit of the students but for the benefit of the politicians.
“Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the 'naturals', the ones who somehow know how to teach.” -- Peter Drucker
"The science of learning shouldn’t be seen as a set of practices to be accepted on faith. Rather it’s a growing body of evidence that helps us understand what works in education, and why."
So, I actually am constructing a literacy education program that at least has some possibility for being a foundation to a science of learning or a science of education.
If anyone, ANYONE is genuinely curious and would like to see my work and whether or not there are genuinely new ideas, please send me a message.
Fascinating argument. I’m curious about how might gender play a role in all this? Teaching has long been a women-dominated profession. Could that be part of why it's been treated as intuitive rather than scientific?
Moving education to be more science-based will require a fundamental reexamination of basic theoretical assumptions education is based on. I'm writing about this with regards to literacy education on my own Substack, so please check it out as I would appreciate your opinion.
Thank you for writing such an interesting article!
Three decades ago our state government instigated a department to review and evaluate effectiveness of teaching initiatives and practices in public schools. It only lasted a few years - basically the election cycle. A different political party won the next election and disbanded the review unit. The problem, as one person working in the unit said to me, was that no one in the school system actually liked or wanted that particular level of scrutiny. The system doesn't want evidence. An education system that doesn't want evidence isn't really in the business of educating.
As the author of "Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices," I want to extend my sincere thanks to Jim Hewitt and Nidhi Sachdeva for so powerfully building upon the foundation I laid 25 years ago. Their recent essay breathes new life into those early assertions, transforming them into a well-reasoned, deeply researched, and urgently relevant call to action for 2025 and beyond.
What makes their contribution so impactful is not only the clarity of their critique but the depth of their scholarship. They draw upon a rich body of research accumulated over the past quarter-century—research that strengthens their arguments and makes their recommendations both timely and essential. I could easily point to a dozen or more ways in which they integrate these findings to illuminate the path forward for education reform.
As they so compellingly argue, while evidence-based professions have driven remarkable progress in fields like medicine and engineering over the past 50 years, education has seen only modest gains—particularly reflected in the stagnation of NAEP scores. Their analysis underscores the urgent need to bring the same rigor and accountability to education.
It is precisely this kind of evidence-driven advocacy that inspired Kelly Butler, Reid Lyon, Linda Diamond, and me to launch the Evidence Advocacy Center. Jim and Nidhi’s work exemplifies the mission we envisioned: to empower educators with the tools, knowledge, and support they need to drive meaningful improvements in student achievement.
The public school system (as well as too many fatherless families) has become a psychological abuse system with one major goal - to retard adulthood and extend infancy 'Devouring Mother' where 28 year olds are still stalling starting life while psychologically still breast-feeding, filled with programs of how to feel, not how to think, so 'men without chests' feelie-thinkys.
I recently used AI to first list what a K-12 education should cover, then paired it down to k-8th and argued that replace most of the touchy-feelie delusional women teachers and admin with get the job done focused men teachers (and the few women that can hold even with those men) and any child that can't keep up with that rate must go away into a different 'pepper-picking' education track and not hold back the class.
At end of 8th grade a systematic test given and the top 15% get university track free of cost, it they want and if they are good enough can extend to Masters and PhD. Starting in 8th grade like was normal 150 years ago when Latin and Greek was expected to a large degree by 8th grade.
Those other 85% go into trades or such so by age 20 they may be earning a level that can marry and start a family, men at 20 marrying women at 16 for example, throw out a bunch of children that bother their parents mostly raise, and march into full productive adulthood without all the Witch-Evil Mind-raping that is standard today.
Doesn't that sound better?
-------------------
Review my pro-Life arguments to great success in 2+ key articles, God's Will.
Using Constitutional and Natural Law I argue that The State must make major changes or make illegal Abortions or Loose the monopoly on violence, and father or any adult willing may replace the father and have same legal status of father with moral, legal, natural rights and obligations to protect his child from extrajudicial murder.
AI generated audio overview of article;
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/05bdb7f7-536c-4e50-90f4-e3dbfa6024b3/audio
"Multiverse Journal - Index Number 2221:, 11th July 2025, Court Motion: State is Obligated to Assist Father/Public Duty to Protect a Child from Abortion."
https://stevenwork.substack.com/p/multiverse-journal-index-number-2221
-----
This is in the form of a letter to a Bishop but contains two main arguments. 1st extends Saint Thomas Aquinas' damage from sin, 2nd uses modern psychological method to same ends, the Key-Log that is at fault.
Ever wonder Why is this world insane and most women are so Sick?
AI generated audio overview of article;
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/dcc1110c-6fdc-4966-a0a6-10948155a59c/audio
"Multiverse Journal - Index Number 2220:, 9th July 2025, A Letter to Traditional Catholic Bishops, Calling for Champions."
https://stevenwork.substack.com/p/multiverse-journal-index-number-2220
--
These also provide an anti-Abortion argument that does not depend on an unborn existing.
I am in total agreement but why is almost all of the education research behind paywalls?
So often (started life as a scientist) I'm reading research or looking into the research cited but can't access more than an abstract. It is so frustrating.
Belinda,
I regret that the standard way to publish educational research (and research in most disciplines) is via businesses (i.e., journals) that seek compensation for access to the publications. There is an effort by some to promote "open science," one pillar of which is open access. The Center for Open Science is a good source for more information about the efforts.
In addition, some journals are adopting open access policies. In special education an example is Research in Special Education from the Alethia Society https://aletheia-society.org
I should note, though you probably know this, that authors (the researchers) do not get rich from the fees that publishers charge for access to the research reports. The authors may gain in academic reputation from the publications, but they don't get paid royalties as they would for, say, a book. In fact, journal publishers charge literally $1000s to authors that want their articles be freely accessible.
There are sites that seek to circumvent the closed access system. ResearchGate and Academia are a couple of them.
But, in answer to your question about why research is behind paywalls, I offer this simple explanation: $$.
JohnL
p.s. If you can't get access to an article on which I'm an author, write to me directly. I can send you a copy.
I agree...highly frustrating -- until about a year ago when I discovered Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/
Enter the title of the article and Google Scholar will return a listing of the desired article and others with similar names. The listing has a large column (left side) and a small column (right). Click on the left to go to the official article site, where you might get access to the full article or perhaps just the abstract. Click on the entry to the right to download the full article from an unofficial source (often a college). Together, these get me the full article about 65% of the time. If the column on the right is blank, the unofficial option is not available. In that case, enter the full title into the browser search bar...the article may be available on someone's personal blog. Final effort: email the author and request a pdf copy of the article "because I found the abstract so exciting!"
The philosophical baggage underpinning this post needs to be unpacked and revised. All knowledge comes in the form of belief. The content of belief is either true or false, and separate from that some beliefs are well-evidenced and some are not.
Belief-based is all anything is at bottom, whether it's based on evidence or not. You should call it fad-based or tradition-based or insular or something else. Data collection, data structure, and data analysis all leave room for personal bias.
If we're going to elevate educational practice, it has to start with clearer thinking.
Thanks, Josh. I agree that we all have beliefs. We use those beliefs to make decisions about our teaching. The point we could have stated more clearly in our post is that there’s a difference between having beliefs and being a belief-based profession.
We see a belief-based profession as one where personal convictions and preferences are not regularly held up to scrutiny against external scientific evidence. There are many reasons why this might happen. In some cases, people distrust science. They might prefer their own beliefs to findings that come from research. It’s also true (as several teachers in this discussion have pointed out) that it is really difficult for teachers to access and interpret the science in the first place. Either way, the result is the same: a culture in which there are fewer opportunities to have one’s beliefs challenged by research evidence, and where there’s little systemic pressure to revise or discard ineffective practices.
A science-based profession, on the other hand, is one where the members of that profession are able to access and interpret the science and are willing to entertain new beliefs. It encourages a mindset of critical inquiry, where practices are refined over time, informed by what evidence suggests is effective, not just what feels right.
I agree that science isn’t immune to bias. But what gives science its strength is its processes for detecting and correcting bias, like replication, peer review, and transparent methods. That’s the kind of culture we think education needs to move toward: one where teachers are better empowered to question and refine their beliefs based on the best available evidence.
Thanks again for your thoughtful post.
They should distrust science. Science never moves anywhere if you don't distrust it, and it would proliferate every folkish trope in education without distrust for it -- it has often tried, and the methods we consider robust now were often once gatekept and resisted by scientists before.
I agree. Skepticism is at the heart of science.
Yes, distrust and skepticism is what we teach our students. It is interesting official reports from Project Follow Through give a very different narrative about DI compared to this article, eg Anderson (1977):
"QUESTION 2: DID FOLOW THROUGH RAISE POOR CHILDREN'S TEST SCORES?
If Follow Through didn't close the disadvantage gap entirely, did it at least
narrow it? Did Follow Through children score better than they would
have without the program?"
Results reported were, only 1 out of 16 DI sites did this for spelling, only 4/16 for reading & 5/16 for Maths.
Anderson reports, DI sites reached "this heroic level of performance with only a minority of its groups... Follow Through has not proved they can do it consistently."
Rather than the uncritical promotion of DI we should be asking why did DI succeed so well in some sites but not others?
Okay, so I didn't think YOUR article was "spicy," as Nidhi mentioned on LinkedIn. But then I read Douglas Carnine's article. NOW I get it. His article takes aim at a whole lot of people and institutions in education, and rightly so. It's like the Emperor who has no clothes. Thank you Jim and Nidhi for highlighting this important article. Douglas Carnine's article could have been written yesterday, sadly. In his article he notes that it took medicine more than century to become a "mature profession." Modern education is easily approaching that. Let's hope we're getting closer.
He notes that "Based on the experience of other fields, it seems likely that intense and sustained outside pressure will be needed." He continues: "The metamorphosis is often triggered by a catalyst, such as pressure from groups that are adversely affected by the poor quality of service provided by a profession." Sputnik and "A Nation at Risk" moved the needle. Wondering if Covid and Emily Hanford's, "Sold a Story" can finally get us there?
Yeah! Small changes, big changes, top down, bottom up, policy makers, educators, parents, students... We are going to need all the support and then it will be like exercising/working out...we can't ever stop working at it. We will have to keep on doing what's needed to maintain and further build strength, stamina and endurance.
What a fabulous article!
Amen amen amen. Amen and amen. without subjecting specific practices to rigorous testing and experimentation and making choices based on evidence of learners’ behaviors, we’re just flying blind. This has been going on for my entire life and it’s so refreshing to see you two raising this flag again. science-based inquiry is more crucial than ever as AI is merging into every aspect of our lives.
I love what you're saying here and it's exciting to think about the potential to improve instruction and student academic success through the science of learning. However, I wonder about some of the newer instructonal approaches that our schools adopt, such as The Thinking Classroom and UDL. I feel quite sure that if I read a book promoting these approaches, there would be pages devoted to how this new approach has proven positive student outcomes; it would APPEAR to be scientifically-based with the support of scientific research. I think I would find it difficult to determine if the research was rigorous or the results were correctly interpreted. Teachers will need to be instructed on how to look at research claims with a critical eye; as a 30+ year teacher, I'm pretty sure I don't have the knowledge, skills or time to assess the veracity or validity of research claims. Preferably, school boards would have teams that fact-check each "new" initiative before teachers implement them.
For example, for The Thinking Classroom, A.I. stated that:
"The 14 practices [of the Thinking Classroom approach] are a result of extensive research in mathematics classrooms, aimed at addressing the issue of students not actively thinking during lessons."
As a teacher looking for a way to improve student learning in Math class, that might sound pretty good to me. How are we to distinguish "good" or correct research from weak research?
In addition to the good points made in the other responses to your comment, I encourage you to read Doug Carnine's comment and follow the links he provided to the project he and Linda Diamond (among many others) are creating on making evidence about effectiveness accessible. For ease, here's a link:
https://evidenceadvocacycenter.org
Thank you for the link, John!
Jim
For sure. I have a post tomorrow 15 July alerting folks to Doug (and, separately, Dan Willingham) creating ‘stacks.
Such an important point!
I highly recommend taking a listen to this awesome podcast episode, where two experts address your very question: how can teachers filter through edu-research when there seems to be a study in support of every method! https://open.spotify.com/episode/5cFeZ6J81ASciSLVL3aY5z?si=8-CffPmqRneSRzqlbcuB6Q
And the AI is picking its words carefully! To its credit, its a bit unclear what “extensive” research actually means. I could spend 10 years doing “extensive” research of a very low quality. As for the Thinking Classrooms research—they were not high-grade, well-designed studies. Small samples, lots of anecdotal evidence, and lacking some clarity in what they were actually measuring! And as for UDL, there simply isn't compelling evidence of it working well at the whole class level.
Definitely check out the pod!
A great resource is Anna Stokke‘s podcast, Chalk & Talk https://www.annastokke.com/podcast
You make a great point. I don’t think many teachers have the skills to look at research critically, and I’m not sure they are open to learning about it, as a whole. Certainly some would be, but not a lot in my opinion. I think where the change can start is in teacher education programs as the authors suggest!
I love your idea about a team that fact checks initiatives. I’d love if the Ministry of Education did that, but they almost do the complete opposite. They actually promote Building Thinking Classrooms and celebrate the approach on the curriculum website! I find it deeply disappointing.
This piece is beautiful and absolutely relevant to the context today. Educators often speak about the change in attitudes and mindset but tend to ignore the data on socio-economic factors that impact motivation to learn n even student attendance at school.
So true! My first question, as i started my PGCE in secondary science, was "where's the rezearch thst supports this?" went down well! Found John Hattie's Visible Learning and started looming stuff up. Then went to a ResearchEd conference oh the joy of that w/e. Then found Daniel T Willingham's work. and i was off 😁
Research had its part to play, at the core of education, but weilding that knowledge effectively, that's the artistry that only a human can bring using the context from a roomful of children.
Sad but very true. I've watched the wheel be reinveted in my district and state too many times to count over the last 3 decades. Unfortunately, teachers don't have a say in any of this, although we're the experts. Often times, ideologies and curriculum resources aren't chosen for the benefit of the students but for the benefit of the politicians.
“Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the 'naturals', the ones who somehow know how to teach.” -- Peter Drucker
"The science of learning shouldn’t be seen as a set of practices to be accepted on faith. Rather it’s a growing body of evidence that helps us understand what works in education, and why."
Discovering the science of learning has been a game changer for me. I wrote about it in The Science of Reading Meets the Science of Learning (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/the-science-of-reading-meets-the?r=5spuf). Thanks so much for this important post!
So, I actually am constructing a literacy education program that at least has some possibility for being a foundation to a science of learning or a science of education.
If anyone, ANYONE is genuinely curious and would like to see my work and whether or not there are genuinely new ideas, please send me a message.
Fascinating argument. I’m curious about how might gender play a role in all this? Teaching has long been a women-dominated profession. Could that be part of why it's been treated as intuitive rather than scientific?
Moving education to be more science-based will require a fundamental reexamination of basic theoretical assumptions education is based on. I'm writing about this with regards to literacy education on my own Substack, so please check it out as I would appreciate your opinion.
Thank you for writing such an interesting article!
Three decades ago our state government instigated a department to review and evaluate effectiveness of teaching initiatives and practices in public schools. It only lasted a few years - basically the election cycle. A different political party won the next election and disbanded the review unit. The problem, as one person working in the unit said to me, was that no one in the school system actually liked or wanted that particular level of scrutiny. The system doesn't want evidence. An education system that doesn't want evidence isn't really in the business of educating.