Despite the business-as-usual #BERA2025 conference, there's clearly a crisis. In the current Review of Education issue, 7 out of 8 articles appear LLM-written. Even worse: all four editors appear to have published LLM-written work (including a fake reference). open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

John Hattie explaining in his own words how AI writes his papers: "there's a new tool out that actually writes the essay for me, and I constructed one, read it... the first one I though 'ah', then I realised I was at fault... so hone, hone, focus, quality control." www.youtube.com/watch?si=YpW...

I've read some absurd AI-written claims but this one from Hattie takes some beating: 'Online survey tools such as Kahoot! and Quizizz are effective tools to assist students in writing assignments, collecting data, and searching for research [19]' Love that it cites a source!

There are now two more AI-written articles co-authored by John Hattie. It makes sense a plagiarist would turn to LLMs, but it is still shocking that the most prominent education researcher of the 21st century is turning out AI slop, together with fake references. open.substack.com/pub/stephenvai…

Before AI, John Hattie plagiarised. Now, it appears he uses LLMs. A recent contribution to a handbook, published by Elgar, included a fake reference. The evidence could not be clearer... stephenvainker.substack.com/p/john-hattie-used-an-llm-to-write?r=695xb6

My final report on 131 LLM-authored articles in BERA journals: BERJ: 46 BJET: 59 Review: 22 Curriculum: only 4 These are staggering numbers & show that BERA, marginalised in the national discussion about education, has seriously lost its way. Change is required! open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

Universities have definitions of plagiarism etc. so that it can clearly and fairly hold students & professors to account. So it's scandalous when Melbourne University didn't use it own definition in an investigation of John Hattie, & instead used a far softer one. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

Today's education establishment think they're FAR more sophisticated than John Hattie. But they've adopted his obfuscatory delusion of being purely evidence-based & non-ideological. We can't tackle the educational crises we're facing without addressing this. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

If you have a passing interest in John Hattie's plagiarism but don't want (for some strange reason) to read an over-long academic article on it, you may be interested in this 👇 open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

You might think a university would use its own definition of plagiarism when investigating a professor. You might also think a university would look at all allegations of plagiarism in its investigation. You'd be wrong. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

You might think a university would use its own definition of plagiarism when investigating a professor. You might also think a university would look at all allegations of plagiarism in its investigation. You'd be wrong. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

Al articles are a road to nowhere, involving a great deal of pain. Beginning: shameless platitudes Middle: dense technical description of elaborate relationships between endless variables. End: shameless platitudes

One AI-written article is a tragedy, 57 is a farce. stephenvainker.substack.com/p/57-ai-writ...

One AI-written article is a tragedy, 57 is a farce. stephenvainker.substack.com/p/57-ai-writ...

I've updated the paper on John Hattie to include plagiarism from 2005, 2021, & 2025. I've now shown that he has plagiarised over 19,500 words across 11 different works, from 1981-2025. It's been 5 months & I've received no indication of any errors. researchgate.net/publication/...

This has to be a low point. An article in the BERJ about the experience of playing 'TargetShootingMania' with 21 fake references going into granular detail about the movement of the cardboard boxes that need to be shot. The research questions? Nothing to do with education. At all. This is madness.

If we allow our flagship journals to fill with AI slop (presumably pushing out excellent or at least competent work in the process) then we are making a better case for our marginalisation than any critic ever could. open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

Any worse writing style than AI florid?

Every article partially AI-written in an upcoming special issue in the British Journal of Technology of Education open.substack.com/pub/stephenv...

The irony: "Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the..." Google Scholar before 2021: 35 Since: 2,385

I have discovered 40 (forty) articles published by the @berj-2025.bsky.social that look highly likely to have been written by AI. Before I explain my evidence & list the articles, I wanted to explain why it matters. The BERJ is a publication I loved and would read through. It can become that again

This new @berj-2025.bsky.social article strongly appears to contain 8 invented citations. A number of extremely low-quality articles have appeared in the journal over the past 18 months. There seems to have been a decline in editorial standards. bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

I would encourage anyone interested simply to look at the claims I made in Appendix A here. If you check them out you will see they are correct. It would be absurd to have to go to court simply to confirm every claim that I've already shown to be true. researchgate.net/publication/...

I've shown that John Hattie plagiarised well over 500 times from his PhD (in 1981) to a work published this year. For pointing this out, John Hattie is suing me for defamation. I want to explain how we got here and why legal action is wrong. (link paywalled) www.heraldsun.com.au/subscribe/ne...

New: Secondary school lost one in six of its year seven to nine pupils, after introducing hardline behaviour policy educationuncovered.co.uk/news/seconda... DfE census data shows big change in cohort numbers at Ark Alexandra Academy, in Hastings, East Sussex.

Project follow through merely shows that a structured approach to teaching is more effective than the most 'out there' 1960s/70s progressive models (see extract). Arguments that it crowns direct instruction as the eternal queen of teaching methods are disingenuous. researchgate.net/publication/...

"A literature that's ...polluted with junk is not only no good to anyone, it's a source of real harm, and it lends itself to ... bad-faith attacks on scientific research in general... We need to speak up more about this situation and we need to start cleaning house more vigorously" #Papermills 🧪

This is co-written by the Minister for Education in Portugal, 2011-2015 & contains a glowing account of... the ed reforms in Portugal, 2011-2015 His opponents' reforms OTOH: a 'less structured curriculum, with less evaluation' & 'vaguely formulated' goals No conflict of interest is acknowledged

The authority behind this dubious notion that class size doesn't matter is John Hattie, and his 2005 paper. This paper, like much of his work, is plagiarised. Here are 13 instances of plagiarism by insufficient citation. Hattie is no authority, and class size is not a settled question.

This article/ essay is SO GOOD, you guys, and also it's about peanut butter. Trust me

This absurd document is the strongest influence on why schools are the way they are today.

The frustrating aspect of this article is something that's all too common in discussion about education today. The authors are strongly pushing a highly ideological Hirsch-inspired approach to curriculum. But they don't do this openly. Rather, they frame their contribution in terms of 'quality'.

An excellent post from @barbarableiman.bsky.social of @engmediacentre.bsky.social on how English teaching has lost its spark. It echoes similar issues I see in history classrooms where genuine engagement with historical debate and process is being lost #historyteacher www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

John Hattie's new paper, released last week, contains extensive further plagiarism. Red indicates plagiarism by copying, purple plagiarism by insufficient citation. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Education should be evidence-informed but to what end? You can systematically press the mind, body & spirit of kids to work as hard as possible at all times to increase achievement output in an evidence-informed way. Scientific management was nothing if not evidence-informed...

John Hattie plagiarised 537 times from his PhD (1981) to Visible Learning (2008) and its Sequel (2023). He also committed 212 significant data errors that would have been avoided if he had used basic data extraction methods. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

The career of John Hattie: Plagiarism, misconduct, and the coarsening of education, Stephen Vainker t.co/K24qGCbW2U

Hace un tiempo publiqué en X una lista de artículos críticos con las ideas y metodología de Hattie y su Visible Learning (x.com/jordi_a/stat...). Hoy leo, sorprendido, cómo plagió y mal parafraseó cientos de artículos... (sigue)

Why does Hattie's plagiarism & misconduct matter? Because it exposes the lie at the heart of what is called the 'science of learning' or 'evidence-based' or 'education reform' movement. This movement is not about 'science', but about 'management science', and it's destructive ⬇️

Visible Learning had a profound influence on ed, ingraining a spurious 'evidence based' approach to education many believe has been narrowing and deadening. I've shown it was never a true work of scholarship - Hattie plagiarised an incredible 212 times. 🧵of 3 examples:

John Hattie has been called 'possibly the world's most influential education academic'. But he has plagiarised 537 times over his career. Here is a thread of 9 examples of the 103 times that he plagiarised by copying. See article at end of thread for full record.

John Hattie plagiarised 537 times from his PhD (1981) to Visible Learning (2008) and its Sequel (2023). He also committed 212 significant data errors that would have been avoided if he had used basic data extraction methods. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

HSE: Coming to the university near you. I really wonder what impact this will have on UK HE more widely as these inpsections unveil how HE 'works'. Staff have been overstretched for years, and as people are laid of and are asked to carry more work...

This is arguably what is increasingly coming through at a national-level data in international testing surveys - English pupils doing relatively well, but, especially in secondary, relatively unhappy, sadly.

The pros and cons of zero tolerance can't be separated. If you create an atmosphere where all are expected to fully commit to the goals of the org (attainment) & back this up by strict rules, then you'll get a combination of high performance and low wellbeing (ratio varying in different contexts).

There's a distinction between ITE promoting teaching practices informed by cogsci and teachers themselves needing a 'deep understanding' of cogsci. The latter's a laughable fad. And such a deep understanding would take years of dedicated study. Is that what's being argued for?

The CogSci claim in this report that teachers need 'A deep understanding of core principles of human cognitive architecture and learning' to implement basic teaching practices such as 'spaced practice' is as nonsensical as anything they criticise. thomasmore.be/nl/media/14395

Reformers claims to being evidence informed are tenuous partly because of faith in gurus. This paper concludes that being evidence informed is important and we are uniquely evidence informed. Fine, but it's followed by.... you should support it because our mate Doug Lemov reckons it's great.

Just found an ed psych with the surname 'Senko'. Surely that's up there with greatest ever nominative determinism?