This year in the science of learning

An end-of-year look at the state of the research and the movement

Hello, Bell Ringers! I can’t believe we are running headlong into the end of 2024. Consider this week’s letter your Spotify “Wrapped,” but for the science of learning (and without all the incredible graphics, sorry).

We are looking back at what happened this year. I’m also reflecting on what I have learned in the last ten months or so focusing my reporting on this one thing.

To read the whole story, you’ll need a paid subscription. I hope you’ll consider becoming a paying subscriber for this upcoming year, which already promises to be an interesting one in the SOL. (New laws for math! Lawsuits for reading materials not aligned with evidence! A bunch of new books from a growing list of SOL players and educators about how to use research in the classroom!)

The cost of one beer or fancy coffee per month allows me to keep doing this work—bringing you the research, info and reporting at the *only* journalism outlet dedicated to teaching and learning research.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support, and this next year promises to be a good one. Consider a full subscription, or giving a gift subscription to your favorite teacher.

Recent stories

Read my interview with Dr. Zach Groshell on his new book, Just Tell Them: The Power of Explanations and Explicit Teaching. “A lot of times we design learning—like we saw with the whole language experiment—for the kids who already know how to do it, or already have the resources from home, and it essentially further disadvantages the other kids. We create that Matthew effect, where the kids who already have a lot of advantages are given even further advantage through the instructional design.” Read the rest here.

Read this guest post from school administrator and former English teacher Cafeteria Duty on the panic over why students aren’t reading more books in school. In CD’s view, there are a host of obstacles that keep schools from getting more books into kids’ hands. “I taught high school English for almost ten years, and I taught very few books. I am not particularly proud of this, but it was an adaptive measure. Part of it had to do with the type of students I taught—mostly poor kids, mostly immigrants, most reading years below grade level— and part of it had to do with the hard reality that all of them needed to pass a state ELA exam.” Read more here.

Read about how big school systems change from philosophy-based instruction to evidence-based instruction from two experts and leaders in the field. This interview with How Teaching Happens author Jim Heal and Frederick County leader Meg Lee is one of the most exciting and enlightening stories I reported all year, because we are talking about what on-the-ground change in the complex environment of real schools with real people might actually look like. “If we are going to teach, we need to understand what it means to learn,” Heal said. Nothing I’ve heard this year may be more important. Read the whole interview here.

*Breaking news (Don’t get to say that very often on the teaching and learning beat!) It’s been a big week for classroom instruction. Math scores were released for the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), a global look at math achievement, and the news for U.S. students is bleak. Fourth graders’ math scores have dropped considerably between 2019 and 2023, with losses being most heavily concentrated in the students already farthest behind—even though no one is exactly sure why. I’m forming some ideas and theories that I’ll share with you in the coming weeks. (Yes the pandemic, but some countries have not only rebounded, but exceeded expectations.) “Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said the NAEP results two years ago were ‘devastating,’ and the TIMSS results are ‘just as devastating.’” Read the whole story at ChalkBeat.

Then there’s the lawsuit. Two Massachusetts moms filed a class-action lawsuit Wednesday against educational publisher Heinemann, “alleging that the educational publisher Heinemann and three of its best-selling authors promoted ‘deceptive’ and ‘defective’ products that made it harder for their children to learn to read,” according to Christopher Peak at APM Reports. Massachusetts has strong consumer-protection laws, lawyers say, and the families are seeking damages plus the thousands they spent on tutoring to help their children read.

It’s hard to overstate how consequential this is for the evidence-based curricula and instruction movement that is still in its infancy. Big things could be ahead that change the game for families and schools, and perhaps not in a good way. (As I said in last night’s chat, imagine what happens when parents find out that math curriculum is also on very shaky ground.) Read the whole story here.

THE MAIN EVENT

The state of the science of learning, nearly one year later

In February, I launched my big idea: I wanted one central place to read about the science of learning and evidence-based instruction, both the research and implementation and the movement itself. I wanted a clear-eyed view of where things were working, where learning was happening and what teachers were trying.

I did a lot of reporting, writing and talking not just here at The Bell Ringer, but at some news outlets and podcasts as well, all related to the scientific evidence on teaching and learning and what role (if any) it played in schools.

There’s little right now in terms of data: we don’t know how many teachers know about ideas like cognitive load theory or working memory; we don’t have data on how many teachers understand the research behind how humans learn. In the U.S. anyway, it’s just too early to know. If you are reading this, you are an early-adopter, and that means for the first couple of years here we are going to struggle to find our footing. (Congrats.)

So in lieu of data, I began exploring questions like ‘what happens if a district really implements the science of learning, will student achievement improve?’, or ‘what do foundational math skills look like, and why are so many students missing them?’

Here are a few stories I wrote this year, or podcasts I was on, talking either mainly or tangentially about the science of learning:

What Happens When a 48,000 student district commits to the ‘science of learning’ at The 74

The Math Wars, The Disagreement Podcast

Bill Davidson’s Centering the Pendulum, talking about the science of math

Kindergarten math is often too basic. Here’s why that’s a problem. at The Hechinger Report

David Geary: Why learning is hard and how to make it easier at TES

Working memory: education’s unfinished revolution at TES

The Tutoring Revolution at Education Next

Better Teaching: Only Stuff that Works, with Gene Tavernetti

Reading Supports Abound in Schools, But Effective Math Help Much Harder to Find at The 74

And then of course, all the work I did right here at TBR.

I spent an entire year thinking about pretty much nothing else besides high-quality research on teaching and learning, what evidence-based practice really looks like, and what that is telling us about the future of education.

Here are the biggest things I learned this year: