Dan Willingham

Special Episode: Science of Reading: Leveled reading, leveled lives, with Tim Shanahan, Ph.D. Tim Shanahan, Ph.D., returns to discuss his new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives: How Students’ Reading Achievement Has Been Held Back and What We Can Do About It, where he outlines what existing ...

This podcast w Tim Shanahan is by the far the easiest way to get up to speed on the research on levelled readers. HIGHLY recommend! (If you want to skip intro, dig in at about 7:30). amplify.com/episode/scie...

A.I.-Driven Education: Founded in Texas and Coming to a School Near You

"students spend a total of just two hours a day on subjects like reading and math, using A.I.-driven software."
Son of a biscuit, people, how many times do you have to see this movie before you know how it ends? www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/u...

What is the Science of Reading? And why the definition matters....

New substack: What is the science of reading? And why the definition matters....
dtwuva.substack.com/p/what-is-th...

Is AI eroding our critical thinking? I'm on The Inquiry via @bbcworldservice www.bbc.com/audio/play/w...

WHOLE BOOKS! I pop into this wonderful podcast episode from @douglemov.bsky.social via @knowledgematrs.bsky.social on the value of reading whole books knowledgematterscampaign.org/post/ep-4-li...

Nu beschikbaar!

How ChatGPT Might Inadvertently Improve Student Thinking In the past few weeks some articles in high-profile publications have alerted people outside of education to a problem teachers have thought about nearly continuously since late 2022: students use lar...

The problems posed by LLMs for education are immediate and obvious, and the promised benefits remain untested and uncertain. But I see one way that LLMs may inadvertently improve student thinking.
substack.com/inbox/post/1...

New data suggests that Race to the Top policies had small positive effects on student achievement, as measured by NAEP reading & math scores. I called that one wrong, I was sure they would have no impact. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3...

On the relationship between word reading ability and spelling ability - Reading and Writing The goal of the present study was to test theories about the extent to which individual differences in word reading align with those in spelling and the extent to which other cognitive and linguistic ...

"Our results suggest that word reading and spelling are one and the same, almost, but that spoken vocabulary knowledge is more closely related to reading than to spelling." Open article from the great Rebecca Treiman and colleagues. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Art of Teaching podcast w Matt Green, touching on a lot of topics from Why Don't Students Like School theartofteaching.podbean.com/e/dr-daniel-...

Video lectures: is engagement/learning affected by whether instructor visibility? No, but engagement is improved is the student's *preference* for visibility is honored. Also, they replicated the finding that speeding the lecture improved learning efficiency onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Always loved the phrase "the windy side of care" but never knew just what Shakespeare meant by it. So I asked ChatGPT, which put the words in the mouth of the wrong character ("It's classic Benedick"), in a quotation that doesn't appear in the play. So I guess I still don't know.

Cool people are the same everywhere. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

I enjoyed being a guest on Amplify’s Science of Reading Podcast--talked with Susan Lambert about the benefits and limitations of comprehension strategies: amplify.com/science-of-r...

50% OFF Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom, 2nd Edition Why Don't Students Like School? Second Edition features 25% updated material while still honoring the classic, beloved approaches of the original. The book draws its themes from the most frequ...

Wiley just put the audio version of Why Don't Students Like School on sale--50% off! www.audiobooks.com/promotions/p...

An introductory course makes people think they know more about a subject than they do. pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Does screen use lead to socioemotional problems in children, or do socioemotional problems prompt children to engage in more screen time? Both, concludes a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies, and both effects are small (open) psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Sign The Open Letter to Stand Up For Science Now! Science is under siege. Trump’s latest Executive Order calls for politically appointed science commissars to evaluate research. Join us in adding your name to our open letter condemning Trump’s escala...

I've signed the open letter condemning the President's exec order calling for "gold standard science." Sounds great, but it would make a political appointee the sole arbiter of whether science meets that standard (and thus would influence policy) #StandUpForScience actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...

Whoever you think I think this cartoon refers to, you're probably right.

Overlooked cells might explain the human brain’s huge storage capacity | Brain and Cognitive Sciences MIT researchers developed a new model of memory that includes critical contributions from astrocytes, a class of brain cells.

Astrocytes make up a large proportion of brain cells. They propagate electrical influences without spiking. Brain communication involves more than just spikes and synapses.
bcs.mit.edu/news/overloo...
#neuroscience

If we leave the acquisition of morphological knowledge to children's reading, what information is there in books to be acquired? @kathyrastle.bsky.social has answers (open). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I find this kind of thing infuriating. It gives people who don't like the result an excuse to dismiss it.

New data: teaching domain-specific knowledge does NOT lead to better memory for new content in that domain. psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...

When an educator leaves a district, is it likely that their salary increases? "...mean earnings are slightly below pre-exit earnings even 8 years later. However, these average changes conceal wide variation." journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Shock device from Milgram obedience experiment

Early Skinner box

Prisoner's uniform from Zimbardo's prison experiment

Gibson's visual cliff (showing depth perception ing babies and others)

A phrenology machine meant for public entertainment...it would sit in a railway station or other public place, you paid a quarter and got a phrenology reading.

I finally made it to the National Museum of Psychology in Akron, and it is so worth the trip! Beautifully put together and informative, and so many artifacts you're recognize. 🧵Here's Bandura's Bobo doll...