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”
who's delivering
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The 10,000-hour rule is dead: practice explains ~14% of performance variance, is itself heritable, and identical twins 20,000 hours apart didn't differ. Necessary, insufficient.

mixedconf: highgc: medium
8/836/48connected:Does teaching music produce musica

Deliberate practice and the 10,000-hour rule · deliberate-practice · ages 6–18 · method

Teaching movement teaches movement: the skills improve, but transfer to cognition, achievement, or lifelong activity is near zero in the best trials.

no effectconf: highgc: medium
7/710/48connected:Does arts education raise academicPhysical activity as an inputDoes teaching grammar improve chilDoes handwriting and transcription+5

Does teaching movement transfer to cognition, achievement, or lifelong activity? · physical-development · 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

Diagnose what a child already knows: teachers cut 40–50% of curriculum for high-ability children and achievement ROSE. The payoff is skipping, not monitoring.

moderate supportconf: mediumgc: medium
16/1625/48connected:Does educational technology raise Feedback and formative assessmentMastery learning (teach → test → r

Placement and mastery diagnosis — deciding what to teach next from evidence of current skill · assessment · ages 5–18 · structure

Coaching buys ~0.25 SD of score and has for 42 years — a fraction of what's advertised — and none of it is ability. The score moves; the construct doesn't.

mixedconf: mediumgc: medium
20/2036/48

Test preparation — does coaching raise scores, and does a raised score mean raised ability? · assessment · ages 5–18 · structure

Trust the composite; distrust the breakdown. Subtest strengths-and-weaknesses replicate at chance on retest, and most of what people read off a score report is noise.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
21/2124/48

What a standardized achievement score does and does not license · assessment · ages 5–18 · structure

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