Classic Arsenal

What's new in learning science? Monthly roundup: Retrieval practice under scrutiny, feedback's missing mechanism, AI that actually teaches, and the quiet erosion of cognitive effort. carlhendrick.substack.com/p/the-monthl...

Featuring @chadaldeman.bsky.social @natwexler.bsky.social @carlhendrick.substack.com @dtwuva.bsky.social @gtoppo.bsky.social @dkthomp.bsky.social @weisenthal.bsky.social @hollykorbey.bsky.social @alexanderrusso.bsky.social ++

Resonates on many levels! #blueLZ #BayernEdu @carlhendrick.substack.com • Absolutely agree on working on really good design later. • Teachers needed more than ever!

I have written a free guide on responsive teaching for UNESCO available here: t.co/puvgOyGgi3

If you are interested in early reading / literacy, this is another must-read from @carlhendrick.substack.com. Really Interesting research which I think will strike a chord with many primary teachers. open.substack.com/pub/carlhend...

We tend to think of reading as a visual act. But a growing body of research suggests that by the time a child encounters a word in print for the first time, their mind has already been preparing for that encounter. ⤵️ carlhendrick.substack.com/p/orthograph...

Researching early teaching machines and fascinated by this 1937 device by Joseph James Ray. Like some weird Steampunk nightmare! It basically tested whether children could generalise from picture pairs: green light for correct, red for incorrect. Pure operant conditioning.

Insightful post about productive failure, structuring learning and the limitations of many ed tech designs.

Στρατηγικές ανάγνωσης και γραφής στην τάξη neapaideia-glossa.gr/articles/1337/ οι οποίες όμως εξαρτώνται από το λεξιλόγιο του μαθητή! (και όχι το αντίστροφο) carlhendrick.substack.com/p/reading-co... @carlhendrick.substack.com on the decks:

Learning at the Edge of Understanding: Correct answers are a lagging indicator of learning, not the mechanism. New post ⤵️ carlhendrick.substack.com/p/learning-a...

Delighted to receive a copy of this today. Great to see the Spanish edition of How Learning Happens out in the world. @paulkirschner.bsky.social

Southern states boost early reading, but gains stall in middle school. Why the ‘Mississippi miracle’ disappears by eighth grade. hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

If the job of teaching is dependent on people sacrificing their own mental health and wellbeing to do the job then this is simply not sustainable.

The great irony of AI: The more we outsource thinking to machines, the more cognitive responsibility falls on the human; constant vigilance, judging outputs, spotting errors, intervening when automation fails. Lisanne Bainbridge called this the "ironies of automation". New post: ⤵️

This is a great piece that nicely pits things I've been seeing in academia. It will be really hard not make genAI into digital asbestos*. But maybe some of it will be more useful than harmful (apart from art; AI art is still shit). *not my analogy, saw it somewhere, but I like it

If I may grossly misquote one of the author’s main conclusions: “Effective AI use requires the very expertise it will unavoidably destroy.”

Os comparto una infografía en la que resumo las diez ilusiones en la enseñanza que @paulkirschner.bsky.social @carlhendrick.substack.com y Jim Heal analizan y desarrollan en su fantástico libro "Instructional Illusions". #RecomiendoLeer #cogsci

"Bainbridge’s central argument was this: the more sophisticated an automated system becomes, the more demanding, not less, the human role within it. She called this the “ironies of automation”, and the irony she had in mind was structural rather than incidental." @volkskrant.nl @parool.nl @trouw.nl

Fortnightly 202: Donna Leon, Duff Cooper's 'Operation Heartbreak', @erinmaglaque.bsky.social on Caravaggio, researchED Cork, @karenswallowprior.bsky.social & @carlhendrick.substack.com on reading, @conorsmurf.bsky.social on AI in teacher training, & more. open.substack.com/pub/juliangi...

AI makes it easier to do more and harder to stop. New piece on "AI brain fry", intensified work, and what this means for education. New post ⬇️ carlhendrick.substack.com/p/ai-brain-f...

Proud to announce that How Learning Happens is being released in the Netherlands as a 3 part series. First one released in September. www.uitgeverijpica.nl/titels/hoe-l...

Does it matter whether students generate examples before retrieval practice or after it? This study suggests the order barely matters. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Paper Mills and the Industrialisation of Scientific Fraud Scientific fraud is often imagined as a rogue researcher. But a recent study shows how paper mills can produce scientific articles on an industrial scale. wp.me/p2nWPo-5Lb

Onderwijsillusies: een klein boek met grote impact Wat een prachtige recensie van mijn nieuwe boek (met @carlhendrick.substack.com en Jim Heal) - ik word er een beetje verlegen van. #EduSky www.deliniaal.nl/onderwijsill...

The Dutch version of Instructional Illusions is out now. What a lovely cover it is too. telos-uitgevers.nl/boeken/onder...

New studies on retrieval practice, seductive details, engagement myths, reading instruction, and the cognitive costs of modern technology. open.substack.com/pub/carlhend...

“When a student encounters a passage where even five per cent of the words are unknown, the signal-to-noise ratio is too low for any strategy to rescue meaning. The text becomes opaque”

Listen to my conversation with Ian Leslie about why we keep getting education wrong open.spotify.com/episode/3m0q...

Reading comprehension is not a skill. It’s an outcome of what you know. Strategies plateau. Knowledge compounds. lnkd.in/e-P9uNE2

The Latest in Literacy is out. Feat. @gavinnewsom.bsky.social @katiecouric.bsky.social @americanprogress.bsky.social @chadaldeman.bsky.social @carlhendrick.substack.com @natwexler.bsky.social @natejoseph.bsky.social @suchmo83.bsky.social @clairecm.bsky.social www.karenvaites.org/p/the-latest...

Do schools kill creativity?” It’s a seductive story. But creativity isn’t a free-floating spark waiting to be protected from schooling. It grows from knowledge, constraint, revision and judgement. Far from killing creativity, schools breathe life into it. open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

🤔 "Reading Comprehension Is Not a Skill", post de @carlhendrick.substack.com en Substack 🔗 carlhendrick.substack.com/p/reading-co...

And this by @carlhendrick.substack.com might be the best response of all. He has found something important (if unsurprising) in the data. Knowledge-building is the only intervention where the *effects improve over time*. open.substack.com/pub/carlhend...

Ah - I see this study has also attracted the attention of @didau.bsky.social who has written about it in more detail here. Well worth a read! open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

*NEW DATE* Friday - 29 May Time: 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM (AEST) Location: Melbourne Exhibition Centre, South Wharf VIC 3006

On World Book Day I’d like simply say that we need more libraries and book swaps. I’d like to see them everywhere. In every community, shopping centre, school, social club. Wherever we go. And they should be stocked with lots of brand new books as well as old ones.

Reading comprehension is not a skill. It’s an outcome of what you know. Strategies plateau. Knowledge compounds. lnkd.in/e-P9uNE2

@carlhendrick.substack.com with a masterful synthesis of the recent discourse about reading comprehension. One of those Standing O, drop-everything-and-read it articles. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Olivia Mullins takes on the issues with a recent meta-analysis on reading comprehension. Knowledge is still plenty important to nurturing comprehension; don't let anyone tell you otherwise. curriculuminsightproject.substack.com/p/dont-recon...

When students can’t find the "main idea", the problem is almost never a missing strategy. carlhendrick.substack.com/p/reading-co...

Fortnightly 201: Filling buckets again English Meet 2026, Barbara Oakley, Emma Smith, Jonathan Bate, Rosita Boland, Mackenzie Crook, Riz Ahmed & Hamlet, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro and more. open.substack.com/pub/juliangi...

#rEdBrum great day today. Every session was excellent and I looking forward to the conversations I want to have with my colleagues on the back of it.

Buckle up, folks. This was a helluva week. And all of this is really important. My latest: www.karenvaites.org/p/the-latest...

Another ode to reading carlhendrick.substack.com/p/waiting-no...

@carlhendrick.substack.com führt über Simone Weil und andere Autorinnen und Autoren an ein Verständnis von Aufmerksamkeit heran, das über die üblichen Diskussionen um Aufmerksamkeit als “Tool” für bspw. Lernerfolg sowie Klagen über abnehmende Aufmerksamkeit hinausgeht, dies am Beispiel des Lesens. 👇

Great early message from @carlhendrick.substack.com at #REdBrum

Excellent points here by @carlhendrick.substack.com - well-worth engaging with. "Most studies I read on AI tutoring are dead on arrival. Not because they are badly designed, not because the researchers lack rigour, but because of the sheer velocity of change in the technology they claim to study."

Next Tuesday is our first BSU HE Reading Group discussion meeting of the new year, looking at something that's come up in different conversations recently. @carlhendrick.substack.com's post is our starting point to inform the group and explore and worth a read anyway.