Bemusings

No, really - nothing bad is happening.

Welp, Bemusings is going on another hiatus. Believe me, nothing bad is happening - I just need to focus on some other things for a while. I've enjoyed connecting with all of you and hope you've benefitted from these musings, and perhaps even found them amusing, at

The argument for banning smartphone use in schools

There are arguments and controversies regarding whether we should ban smartphones and/or social media from teenagers entirely - I've written about them before (see the first two paragraphs of this post). As of yet, I don't think the evidence is sufficiently conclusive to support a total

Why it's a bad idea to track students based on cognitive ability tests given early in life

There's a lot of controversy1 around the idea of tracking in schools (i.e., testing students for ability or performance and then grouping them for differential curricula and/or instruction). Two of the many questions asked about this practice are whether the tests used to track students are

What happens when people express their motivational needs?

"This isn't working for me." It was tough for me to hear that from one of my advisees, but I was glad they told me. See, I firmly believe good advising starts from the advisee's needs, knowledge, and skills - I adapt much of what

ChatGPT helps students be more creative...maybe

At the moment, we are living through the hype cycle of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT. Claims that generative AI tools going to "change everything" or "replace workers" are louder than concerns about whether such changes or replacements are things people actually want. But,

Why we should focus our classrooms on promoting competence

Focus on honing your craft, rather than fixating on where you stand compared to others. That's one of the lessons of achievement goal theory, which describes the kinds of academic goals students focus upon. People with mastery goals are focused on developing their own competence, whereas those with

How to tell your intervention is helping people discern true from false news.

This will be a short post as I am rushing to wrap things up before flying out to the American Educational Research Association conference. I'm confident there will be presentations on combatting misinformation there, and I hope the effects of those interventions were analyzed in ways advocated by

The right tool for the right job. Reconciling the debate about active learning.

I really like the work Amedee Marchand Martella has been doing, lately. She published a well-reasoned review and critique of the active learning literature in which she called for more rigorous and systematic investigation of active learning pedagogies. Now, following good practice in theory development, Martella and her colleagues

A new way of thinking about how social media affects us.

If you're the kind of person that follows technology, psychology, and/or adolescence content on social media, then you've probably heard quite a bit about Jonathan Haidt's new book on what he calls The Anxious Generation. In short, he attributes the relatively recent increases

Mindfulness predicts positive academic outcomes. But can we enhance people's mindfulness?

I'll admit that I haven't paid a lot of attention to the mindfulness literature. But maybe I should. Mindfulness involves the ability to focus attention, be aware of the present moment, and accept oneself. These skills all rely on executive functions, and in turn, the skills

Does ChatGPT hate split infinitives as much as I do?

I consider myself very fortunate to have gone to a high-school with dedicated, skillful teachers who put in enormous amounts of time to hone their students' writing. To this day, I remember their cheeky advice: "Ending a sentence with a preposition is like stubbing your toe!"

Testing is dead! Long live testing!

Many educators, education researchers, and families are kind of sick of testing. However, we need to be careful about what kinds of tests we are talking about here. High-stakes testing (e.g., exams with major implications for a student's academic career or life, such as exams to

Transcendent thinking, positive life outcomes, and school.

I'm going to get a little topical in this Bemusing, so if that's not your cup of tea, then feel free to close this tab. I worry that laws banning the discussion of "divisive concepts" will have a chilling effect on education. These laws

How to promote intellectual humility in classrooms.

I like being around people who know a lot, but I like it even better when they are also open and honest about what they don't know. This quality is called intellectual humility, and it is a virtue. Intellectual humility is one's (1) awareness of the

"Wise" Growth Mindset Messages Help First-Generation College Students

I like where the growth mindset literature is headed. Based, in part, on thoughtful critiques (like those by Yan & Schuetze, 2023), mindset researchers are honing their interventions to be "wise", to be targeted to students who would benefit from them (e.g., first-generation college students in

Finally! Computational modeling comes to educational psychology.

This is going to be a short post because my message is simple: if you're interested in the future of quantitative modeling of learning and teaching phenomena, then you need to read this article by Brendan Schuetze (2024). In it, he asserts a computational model of school achievement.

More support for the "seed and the soil" approach to social-psychological interventions.

There have been some serious critiques of social-psychological interventions, such as those addressing mindsets and belongingness. However, counterarguments have been made that such interventions do have positive effects, albeit perhaps smaller than previously claimed, when delivered (1) robustly, (2) to people who need them, and (3) in contexts that

How culture helps us to understand

I've always struggled with the idea that people can be "objective." We learn and understand new things by connecting them to things we already know (see here). So it seems difficult, if not impossible, for people to be "objective," if that word is taken

Is AI the smile on a dog?

If you're around my age, you probably remember the song "What I Am" by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians: That song has some often-quoted lyrics, like these: "Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box. Religion is the smile on a dog."

Here are educational neuroscience results I can get behind.

I think educational neuroscience is a fascinating and really promising field. That said, I tend to cringe a bit when I see particular findings or interventions labeled as "brain-based." Unfortunately, there's a lot of educational neuroscience hokum out there whereas the defensible applications of neuroscience

Serious games might lead to serious educational gains

I have been just a little skeptical of educational digital games. I can imagine how students might learn from them, but I have not been convinced they are so much more effective than other, less-resource intensive forms of education. (I mean, good video games cost a lot of money

More evidence that people should put away their phone when studying

Multitasking is a bad idea. Sure, people can walk and chew gum at the same time, because neither of those require much conscious attention (unless you're just learning to walk for the first time, in which case - who gave that toddler gum?!?!?). When it comes to thinking, our

As you suspected, emergency remote instruction during the pandemic...wasn't great.

I hope none of us have to relive the COVID-19 pandemic. Among many difficult challenges, emergency remote instruction (i.e., around March 2020, when suddenly most educators had to become online instructors, overnight, with little to no preparation or resources for doing so) was rough for everybody, but particularly

Can we fix executive function interventions and be more effective at helping people succeed in life?

You know how painful memories can stick with you? I've got one like that. It was about ten years ago that a colleague asked me to lunch to talk about executive function (EF) skills. A few of her family members had just been diagnosed with deficits in EF

It may not matter when, it just matters that we combat misinformation.

Information is sticky. Once we read it, it can be hard to get it out of our head, even if we later read that the information was actually false (i.e., misinformation). This is called the continued influence effect, and it's a serious concern in our modern, social-