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

Physical capacity is about as heritable as cognitive ability (~60%, no shared environment). Whether trainability is a stable trait remains unproven — the skeptics are winning.

strong supportconf: highgc: low
14/1436/48connected:How should a school run its classrDoes working-memory or brain trainCan executive function be trained,Does teaching a growth mindset rai+4

Talent and trainability — what is heritable, and what that does not license · talent · ages 4–18 · input

Most measured 'home environment' effects are parents' genes: three-quarters of parent-child transmission isn't rearing, and a whole better childhood buys ~4 IQ points.

mixedconf: highgc: low
12/1236/48connected:The parent as instructor

The early home environment — what parents can and cannot causally move · early-childhood · ages 4–10 · input

Matching instruction to 'learning styles' does nothing: real matching experiments return d=.04. The correlational literature IS the myth.

debunkedconf: highgc: low
13/1321/48connected:Brain Gym, Whole Brain Teaching, a

Does matching instruction to a child's "learning style" improve learning? · debunked · ages 4–18 · debunked

Later bells buy adolescents 40+ measured minutes of sleep — the best-identified positive effect in the archive; the achievement payoff is real but far smaller.

strong supportconf: mediumgc: low
18/1836/48

Do later school start times increase adolescent sleep, and does that raise achievement? · health · ages 11–18 · input

Correcting a real deficiency moves cognition (iron in anaemic children: 0.79 SD); supplementing already-fed children moves nothing (35 RCTs, 19,343 children).

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
20/2018/48connected:Does teaching movement transfer to

Breakfast, school meals, and micronutrients — what feeding children actually buys · health · ages 4–18 · input

A missed day costs little (~0.005 SD); interventions reliably buy days back cheaply, but nobody has shown the recovered days move achievement.

mixedconf: mediumgc: medium
14/1439/48

Chronic absenteeism — does raising attendance raise achievement? · time · ages 4–18 · input

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
11/1120/48connected: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.