The Evidence on Teaching

Explore the evidence

6 of 88 decisions · clear everything

Survives the gold standardIndependent, durable, rigorousThe debunked shelfCheap winsFor parents at homeFamous numbers, deflatedWhere we admit ignoranceThe terrain
evidencealldrop DA–BA only
evaluatoranyno dev-ledindependent
durabilityanyfollow-up≥1yr≥2yr
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Your situation · from the applicability layer — absence means “not yet assessed,” never “doesn’t apply”
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Immersion costs nothing in English and buys a little — a lottery puts English reading 0.13-0.22 SD ahead by grades 5 and 8 — but no lottery has ever measured how much of the second language students actually learn.

moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low
8/824/48

Does dual-language immersion work, and is the gain in the second language or in English? · foreign-language · ages 4–18

Teaching coding teaches coding: the one clean school RCT gives g=0.47-0.68. Which approach you pick barely matters, and almost every effect size rests on an instrument the developers built.

moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low
22/2225/48connected:Does learning to code improve geneTalent and trainability

Does teaching programming actually teach programming — and does the method matter? · computer-science · ages 5–18

Explicit form-focused teaching beats pure exposure, so the archive's negative verdict on L1 grammar does NOT transfer — but the effects are measured on the taught forms, immediately, mostly on adults.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
11/1118/48connected:Does teaching grammar improve chil

Comprehensible input or explicit grammar teaching — which builds a second language? · foreign-language · ages 4–18

Attainment falls steadily with age of first exposure, but the sharp critical period is contested and an earlier classroom start buys nothing durable: start young for immersion, not for two lessons a week.

mixedconf: mediumgc: medium
14/1424/48

Is there a critical period for learning a second language, and when should a child start? · foreign-language · ages 4–18

Never operationalised well enough to test: no MI-based trial meets even a loose evidential bar. Four decades in, a valid evaluation is still impossible.

insufficientconf: mediumgc: medium
4/412/48connected:Does teaching movement transfer to

Should Gardner's multiple intelligences be used as a basis for instruction? · debunked · ages 4–18 · debunked

Brain Gym, Fast ForWord, coloured overlays, the Mozart effect: tested and failed, or never evidence-based at all. Mozart works exactly as well as any other music.

debunkedconf: mediumgc: low
11/1118/48connected:Does teaching visual art produce aDoes matching instruction to a chiDoes working-memory or brain trainDoes learning music make children

Brain Gym, Whole Brain Teaching, and the smaller classroom brain fads · debunked · ages 4–18 · debunked

The URL is the state — any view you build here is a permalink you can hand to someone mid-argument.