New Research on the Science of Learning

The reading this week is from Dr Carl Hendrick, Professor of Evidence-Informed Learning and Teaching at Academica University in Amsterdam, who writes a monthly newsletter of newly published research in education. I admire his work and follow his Substack.

Each sentence is a summary of a research paper:

• Many students fail to improve because they don’t know how to act on feedback, even if they try. Teaching how to respond to feedback may be as important as the feedback itself.
• Deliberately making and correcting errors during learning leads to better long-term memory retention than simply re-studying material.
• Digital reading requires explicit strategy instruction as students don’t automatically transfer print reading skills to screen-based texts.
• A short retrieval quiz before a final exam significantly improved performance across question types in a diverse college student sample.
• Having readers self-explain or retrieve explanations after reading a science text significantly improves both the accuracy and depth of their recall.
• What happens when you let students manage their own screen time in class? Most don’t, until their grades suffer.
• Memorisation isn’t ‘drill and kill’, it’s the foundation that makes creative thinking possible.

If you’d like to dig deeper on any of the studies, the link and summaries can be found at The Learning Brief: Research Worth Knowing – July 2025

Happy coaching.

Kind regards
Mark

Upcoming events

• 29 August – Wellington College NZ: Improving the Behaviour and Engagement of Boys
• 3-5 September – BGS Crowther Centre with Growth Coaching International: The Impact Cycle in Action
• 5 September – A Learner’s Toolkit: Anglican Church Grammar School QLD: A Matter of Translation
• 5-7 October – Instructional Coaching Group: Teaching Learning Coaching Conference (Arizona, USA)