According to Kier Starmer, I guess the UK's only a little bit at war with Iran then... illegally.

Just your friendly reminder of how "engagement" typically works on social media:

Idan Blank (UCLA, psych) makes the complex intuitive if you want to learn how LLMs work, watch👇 newly posted to YouTube (no ads) www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMn...

My favourite read this month: Hewitt, J., & Sachdeva, N. (2025, July 8). Beyond belief: Reframing teaching as a science-based profession [Substack newsletter]. The Science of Learning. scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/beyond-bel...

Why we cannot trust LLMs. Personally, I wouldn't change a word of this paper. Cut the bullshit: why GenAI systems are neither collaborators nor tutors Flenady, G., & Sparrow, R. (2026). Teaching in Higher Education, 31(1), 1–10. doi.org/10.1080/1356...

📣 "Linguistic Knowledge and Language Use" (CUP, 2024) now in Paperback! The book is Open Access & can be downloaded for free from CUP's website. But if you prefer physical copies, this might interest you as it is 4x cheaper than the Hardback format! Here: doi.org/10.1017/9781...

The persistent and seductive appeal of discovery learning, despite its limitations and failures, reflects a mix of cognitive biases, ideological commitments, and cultural narratives rather than any strong empirical support. #EduSky www.kirschnered.nl/2025/03/30/t...

If LLM-generated lesson plans or curricula are better or just equal to your own, it doesn't mean you should use them instead, it means you have some hard work ahead of you to improve your instructional design abilities. Don't accept mediocrity.

Re: AI & LLMs in education, tech bros selling their products are like being on a date with someone who stalks you, is inappropriately intrusive, pushy, & manipulative, doesn't listen, & won't take no for an answer. Pretty creepy when you think about it.

If you want to know why unaided independent studying, reading, & writing are so important for cognitive development & learning, this book will not only inform you but show you how to practise in optimal ways: www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

another great paper from @mh-christiansen.bsky.social, showing that non-constituents* can be primed It's more evidence that traditional linguists were mistaken to believe memory was in short supply: Human memory is compressed, clustered, implicit and vast

@adelegoldberg.bsky.social Have you seen this? Nielsen, Y. A., & Christiansen, M. H. (2026). Evidence for the representation of non-hierarchical structures in language. Nature Human Behaviour, 1–10. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

The pernicious intrusion into & effects on research of big tech is compromising our ability to understand what is really happening to all of us. See: Industry Influence in High-Profile Social Media Research arxiv.org/abs/2601.11507

*How you really can't trust tech bros & their marketing teams* ChatGPT is "hallucinating" again. I deleted my entire chat history a few days ago... & yet it tells me:

Ever wondered how the Dalmatian Dog effect works? The human brain can quickly learn from a single experience and generalize it to related experiences — an impressive feat so far not matched by AI. Our new paper in @natcomms.nature.com reveals how this works. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Well worth a read! Doing things doesn't necessarily lead to learning things. Students may look like they're competent & knowledgeable but that's just an illusion; they may be merely following instructions &/or "aping" competent-like behaviour.

A brief summary of how to create the necessary & sufficient conditions for teaching & learning to thrive: educationrickshaw.com/2026/01/31/w...

The automatically generated Google NotebookLM infographic has become the "word cloud" of the 2020s.

RIP Sly Dunbar, 1952-2026. A legend & one of the most influential drummers of all time.

I think we're currently in the "radium skin cream" phase with AI. When we discovered radioactivity, people tried to cram into everything, and it didn't end well. AI is a discovery at least as important as radioactivity, and at least as dangerous.

I've had issues with taking self-report questionnaires at face value in education for some time now. This study is just one example of how learning processes are frequently not available to the conscious awareness of learners & that we have to find more valid & reliable ways of gathering evidence

Re: the Dunning-Kruger effect from using LLMs, I think that's certainly part of it, i.e. that novices assume they're more competent than they are because they don't yet know how little they know. ...

Please sign this petition & help #denmark buy #california. They promise universal healthcare, rule of law, & all the Danish pastries Trump can eat: denmarkification.com

The burden of proof fallacy: Idiots make a claim but you have to disprove/debunk it. It's the person who's making the claim that has to provide the evidence/proof. Otherwise, in the next press conference, they'll claim that Ibuprofen causes ADHD.

@adelegoldberg.bsky.social I think you'll enjoy this paper on the differences & implications of human cognition vs. LLMs from an epistemological basis: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

It looks like this company's mission is to become the Amazon of education... because Amazon's business model has worked so well for its workers' rights & working conditions, right?

Book on Speech Act Theory from Cambridge. Free until the end of this month! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Happy Winter Solstice, everyone!

As usual, @carlhendrick.substack.com provides valuable insights on learning &, in this case, that are particularly relevant to popular language learning apps: Read the article: carlhendrick.substack.com/p/why-most-e...

I guess one silver lining from the abuse of LLMs by students is that teachers & faculty are taking a lot more interest in the science of learning!

NEW BLOG POST Backward design vs. technology-first adoption, or why EdTech will not save you Continue reading: matbury.com/wordpress/in...

For those trying to defend exposing children to social media & opposing bans of smartphones in schools, please read: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Why has England been more successful than the US in aligning education with cognitive science? Maybe because England uses a different kind of test for accountability. Read more in my latest post, on a new book by former schools minister Nick Gibb. nataliewexler.substack.com/p/could-it-h...

There's a flood of questionable research published on effects of AI use in education. To help us navigate the meaningfulness of this research, here's a quick guide to effect of instruction research design when purely motivated by publication. Enjoy! 🤣 www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O5y...

We love to say we’re building a ‘love of reading’. The evidence suggests we’re doing no such thing. Pleasure doesn’t lead to fluent reading; fluency makes pleasure possible. Reading for pleasure should be an outcome, not a curricular aim. open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

Happy Constitution Day! 🇪🇸

I reckon @coldwarsteve.bsky.social is our modern equivalent to William Hogarth. Please support him, buy his stuff, etc.; He's one of the good guys. Hogarth: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...

Sadly, legendary STAX guitarist, Steve Cropper, has passed away. He cut tracks with the greats, among them Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, & Rufus Thomas. Thanks for the great music!

Promoting student use of LLMs? Two questions: 1. What's your curriculum, i.e. *How* do you propose to teach critical thinking with LLMs? 2. What evidence do you have that it'll produce effect sizes greater than d.4?

1/9 What's troubling me about the discourse about using LLMs (Generative AI chatbots) for learning & teaching:

I'm impressed with the creative solutions that BigBlueButton are putting into their UX design these days. For example, this is solving very real problems & offering much desired affordances to tutors who host synchronous online collaborative lessons: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLNK...

1/7 I saw an AI generated infographic & a link to a blog post today about reading comprehension strategies. A thread 🧵...

It looks like the more critical thinking & thoughtful among us are pushing back hard against the reckless insertion of LLMs into academic contexts: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Just so that you know I know: I know when you've posted a comment generated by an LLM. No not you. I know you're conscientious & considerate & would never do such a thing. But you... you know who you are.

BLOG POST Why traditional EFL coursebooks fail to develop communicative & linguistic competence Continue reading: matbury.com/wordpress/in...

Re: Criticisms of LLM-generated texts...

Profesores de educación primaria: ¡Cuidado con abusar de las lecturas en pantalla!, el alumnado a esas edades aún necesita experiencias de lectura sosegadas si queremos fomentar su motivación lectora. 👉 bsky.app/profile/eril...

NEW BLOG POST Integrating extramural English: Developing stronger communicative proficiency in universities & colleges Continue reading: matbury.com/wordpress/in...

Research showing learning gains from using ChatGPT in classrooms? Well, not all education studies are designed equal. Allow Dr Frank Boers to explain 🤣 😬 www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O5y...