The Evidence on Teaching

Explore the evidence

7 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
what are these? →
sortconfidencerobustfragileA–Z
domain
verdict
confidence
layer
survival prior
Your situation · from the applicability layer — absence means “not yet assessed,” never “doesn’t apply”
who's delivering
group / setting
cost
outcome class

Neither acceleration mandates nor delay mandates work — readiness-matched placement does. Push everyone and the median falls; hold everyone back and the top falls.

mixedconf: highgc: low
9/936/48connected:Acceleration and gifted programsSchool starting age, relative age,

Algebra timing — acceleration mandates, delay mandates, and readiness-based placement · math · ages 11–18

The textbook matters at the bottom, not the top: avoid the demonstrated losers; mainstream choices now differ by ~0.02 SD.

mixedconf: highgc: low
11/1124/48connected:Background knowledge and vocabularSchool spending, charters, and wha

Math curriculum choice — how much does the textbook matter? · math · ages 5–14

Life-skills courses reliably teach the content and rarely change the conduct; behaviour moves only where instruction sits close in time to the decision, and driver education is worse than nothing.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
11/1148/48

Do life-skills courses — money, cooking, driving, health — change what students actually do? · practical · ages 6–18

Sort by what the software replaces: adaptive drill inside the school day buys +0.05-0.20 SD; a device, a connection or the teacher buys zero to negative; LLM tutors have no usable evidence at all.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
53/5339/48connected:Placement and mastery diagnosisMastery learning (teach → test → rTutoringClass-size reduction

Does educational technology raise learning — CAI, adaptive software, devices, screens, and AI tutors? · edtech · ages 5–18 · structure

Guided inquiry is positive in 16 of 16 PISA regions and unguided inquiry negative in 18 of 20 — but the programmes built on that finding go to zero at scale: +0.22, then +0.01, then +0.02 on the same test.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
19/1927/48connected:Science content sequencingExplicit instruction vs discovery/Laboratory and practical work in sTeaching students to think scienti

Inquiry-based science teaching vs explicit and textbook science teaching · science · ages 8–18

One systematic review kept 39 studies from 11,771 records; another found 1 RCT among 53. What evidence exists favours interest (+0.12) over attainment (+0.01), and simulations match real apparatus.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
22/2221/48connected:Science misconceptions and conceptInquiry-based science teaching vs

Laboratory and practical work in school science · science · ages 5–18

Conceptual-change teaching reliably moves the test and nothing shows it removes the intuition. Corrected for design and publication bias, a taught unit is g≈0.64 and a refutation text g≈0.28.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
10/1017/48connected:Laboratory and practical work in s

Science misconceptions and conceptual change — can naive intuitions be taught away? · science · ages 6–18

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