EdBlogs

In an ideal world, the final stretch before the summer holidays would be a gradual, relaxing wind down. In reality, it can feel more like a panicked sprint – or an agonising crawl – to the finish line. The days of sticking on a DVD and being done with it are (largely) over, but there are still ways to lighten the load as the final day approaches. W...

A small group of UK educational researchers have been trying to promote 'evidence-based' education for some time. With the establishment of ResearchED and the Educational Endowment Foundation - and its teacher-oriented toolkit reviewing the relative cost and benefit of different interventions - research informed practice is now firmly on the politi...

Where does he work?  Loic Menzies is the director of LKMco, an education and youth "think- and action-tank" that produces policy research and campaigns for all young people to make a fulfilling transition to adulthood. He previously worked for Cambridge City Council and as a young advocate for the charity Changemakers, and as a teacher at...

A new guide from US-based Mathematica Policy Research's Center for Improving Research Evidence, explains to educators how to tell which type of research evidence supports claims about effectiveness, ordering them from the weakest (anecdotal) to the strongest (causal). The guide gives examples of common sources for each type of evidence, such as mar...

Why do some people learn at a faster rate than others? Answering this question has been researcher K. Anders Ericsson's life work. He has studied expert performers in various walks of life, including chess, music, sport and business. He found that experts in these very different areas shared one thing in common: they didn't just work hard, they wor...