The preliminary programme for @ces2026.bsky.social is now out. What a fabulous line up! airess.fgses-um6p.ma/CES2026?__cf...

🧠 What drives high-performing education systems? Montserrat Gomendio (former OECD Deputy Director of Education) joined me to unpack why some countries excel, what PISA reveals, and why reform is so hard even when we know what works. 🎧 #ChalkandTalk #PISA

CITIZEN SCIENCE - Two excellent articles on how good it is! ‘My head feels clearer’: how citizen science can improve people’s health theconversation.com/my-head-feel...? theconversation.com/there-may-be...? All Damian's birding goes into e-bird - I go with him but he's the one with the knowledge.

The Science of an Evolutionary Transition in Humans I was honored to give a colloquium talk at the KLI last week on the Science of an Evolutionary Transition in Humans. There's a lot to cover, so it's a dense talk.

ROCK ART as knowledge - as it should be portrayed! NT rock art thousands of years old sheds new light on the mysterious Tasmanian tiger theconversation.com/nt-rock-art-...? "These variations ... more likely they relate to different ways paintings were used to pass on information about the animal."

NEW FREE POST Differentiated Instruction My role in its downfall fillingthepail.substack.com/p/differenti...

Join me on Friday, April 10th! euromathsoc.org/news/ems-lec...

New OA paper @royalsocietypublishing.org: What can we learn from bonobos and bottlenose dolphins about the evolution of between-group cooperation? royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... Lovely collab with @lirsamuni.bsky.social Martin Surbeck and Richard Connor.

New article from E. D. Hirsch and me on (1) the evidence for the importance of knowledge in reading; (2) why it’s taken so long for people to acknowledge the evidence; (3) what we predict if the role of knowledge is taken seriously. www.educationnext.org/rediscoverin...

Chris Frith in conversation about his life and work. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otgz...

John Sweller developed cognitive load theory. He is my guest in the next episode of Chalk & Talk! Coming tomorrow, March 20. Don’t miss it!

British archeologist and writer Mike Pitts recently argued that the Easter Island statues were meant to be where they are - not all heading for the platforms. I argued this way in The Memory Code. I compare our different approaches reaching the same conclusion: www.lynnekelly.com.au?page_id=6876

@fordhampress.bsky.social publishes scholarship across the humanities & social sciences. The Fordham University Press Publisher Collection offers access to more than 60 new titles in 2026 & more than 1,250 backlist works, including more than 60 #OpenAccess books. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4svGQTy

“findings offer original insights into the social organization of craft production and the rise of symbolic practices at the dawn of sedentism, which ultimately shaped the Neolithic transition in Southwest Asia” 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Interested in the Big Questions of human evolution, culture and society? In the Vienna area? Come join my colloquium at the Konrad Lorenz Institute on March 26 at 15:00. I will be speaking on: The Science of an Evolutionary Transition in Humans kli.ac.at/en/events/ev... Also online.

Art or scribbles? In the Eye of the Beholder: The Evolutionary Emergence of Visual Communication by Iain Davidson (Springer, 2025) www.lynnekelly.com.au?page_id=6859 At last we have an authoritative book on the story of art from its first emergence as human mark-making to contemporary works.

NEW Freedom stifles creativity whereas constraint forces imagination to work. open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

NEW FREE POST The Gift of History The familiar and the strange fillingthepail.substack.com/p/the-gift-o...

The autism spectrum has widened to the point of collapse, with important implications for provision in overstreched classrooms. But, as @utafrith.bsky.social points out: "We’re all neurodiverse"... www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

Super-interesting.

ALL IN MEMORY - SELVAGEM This Brazilian organisation has produced a really practical free Notebook based on one of my talks on Indigenous knowledges and memory systems. More on my website. I would love this to bring more international readers to my books. www.lynnekelly.com.au?page_id=6829

Very cool paper relevant to social imitation www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

“The organization [of the markings] points to the transmission of more complex ideas,” von Petzinger says. In my books, especially The Knowledge Gene, I talk about the role of art in non-literate cultures. All modern humans are capable of complex ideas! www.scientificamerican.com/article/ston...

US teacher commentary on edutainment. I told you it would make a comeback as we saw declining attention. Scaffolding disguised as support in a really interesting take, because actually he’s right. In too many instances it’s not because the pupils can’t 1/n

🚨 New episode with Sarah Powell is now live! We talk about what the Science of Math movement is, why it’s gained momentum, and what a statement by the NCSM gets wrong about the Science of Math. Links below👇

Nice @mattbarnum.bsky.social piece describing an important new study on whether really effective (85th%ile) teachers who have a big change in school context continue to be really effective. They don't: they continue to be effective (66th%ile), but not top tier. www.chalkbeat.org/2026/02/17/t...

The Great Day of His Wrath (ca. 1853), by John Martin, who met his maker #onthisday in 1854. More on his life and art in Max Adams' essay “John Martin and the Theatre of Subversion” — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/john-martin-and-the-theatre-of-subversion

NEW CURIOS In the free section I discuss differentiation / differentiated instruction fillingthepail.substack.com/p/curios-of-...

An exciting advance in developmental psychology! Toddlers expect ingroup loyalty to override personal preferences when outgroups are present | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

NEW Overconfident by Design How confidence drives action , distorts judgement and fuels learning open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

www.amazon.com/Born-History... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B...

Reduced feedback, and especially feedback that’s deliberately faded from specific to general, is a quiet but powerful way to shift responsibility from the teacher’s correction to the learner’s cognition. And that’s exactly what education is supposed to do.

It is going to be the biggest ever Australian researchED. Today, we hit 540 registrations and we are still going! Don't miss out on being a part of this movement. Tickets: events.humanitix.com/researched-b...

My GPT is starting to push back, telling me to be less ranty. Good advice, I think. I am too ranty.

I think this would make it into 'assigned reading' regardless of what I was teaching (bit.ly/4rovP5P). You can find it elsewhere online for free as well. Only a dozen pages long.