Explore the evidence
10 of 88 decisions · clear everything
Grit is conscientiousness renamed and adds 0.4% to grade prediction; self-control genuinely predicts life outcomes but is 60% heritable with zero shared environment, and training moves ratings, not lives.
mixedconf: highgc: mediumAre self-control and grit teachable levers on achievement? · character · ages 4–18
Growth-mindset interventions change beliefs almost everywhere and change achievement almost nowhere: the two independent national-scale trials measured standardized tests and found exactly zero.
mixedconf: highgc: lowDoes teaching a growth mindset raise achievement? · character · ages 4–18
Should a school buy a social and emotional learning programme? · character · ages 4–18
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: lowDo life-skills courses — money, cooking, driving, health — change what students actually do? · practical · ages 6–18
Civics teaching buys civic knowledge (d = 0.49) that fades to the control mean in two years and moves neither attitudes nor validated turnout; what moves voting is school quality and noncognitive skill.
mixedconf: mediumgc: lowDoes civic education produce civic knowledge, and does civic knowledge produce civic behaviour? · history-civics · ages 5–18
Classroom order is causally worth a great deal — one disruptive peer costs classmates 3% of adult earnings — yet no branded behaviour programme reliably delivers it and exclusion makes things worse.
mixedconf: mediumgc: lowHow should a school run its classrooms and its discipline system? · behavior · ages 4–18 · 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: lowInquiry-based science teaching vs explicit and textbook science teaching · science · ages 8–18
Two reviews screened ~12,000 records and found one RCT and six quasi-experiments. What evidence exists favours interest (+0.12) over attainment (+0.01), and simulations match real apparatus.
mixedconf: mediumgc: lowLaboratory and practical work in school science · science · ages 5–18
What parents are asked to DO is the whole effect: tutoring a skill d≈1.15, listening to reading 0.51, reading aloud ~0.18 — same parent, same child. All deflate under better designs.
mixedconf: mediumgc: mediumThe parent as instructor — what survives when the person teaching is the person who raised the child · homeschool · ages 4–18 · method
Homeschoolers get plenty of social contact but measurably fewer, closer peer ties; whether that helps or harms has never been causally tested.
insufficientconf: lowgc: highHomeschool socialisation — the most-asked question, and the least answerable one · homeschool · ages 6–18 · structure
- Algebra timing — acceleration mandates, delay mandates, and readiness-based placement
- Chronic absenteeism — does raising attendance raise achievement?
- Class-size reduction
- Curriculum choice as a school-level lever
- Deliberate practice and the 10,000-hour rule
- Feedback and formative assessment
- The early home environment — what parents can and cannot causally move
- Mastery learning (teach → test → reteach to criterion → advance)
- Math curriculum choice — how much does the textbook matter?
- Feedback frequency and mental practice in motor learning
- Practice scheduling for motor skills — varied vs blocked, spaced vs massed
- Should Gardner's multiple intelligences be used as a basis for instruction?
- Breakfast, school meals, and micronutrients — what feeding children actually buys
- Preschool at scale — Head Start, state pre-K, and what universal provision delivers
- Perry Preschool and Abecedarian — what the famous studies actually establish
- Reading-comprehension strategy instruction (reciprocal teaching, summarizing, questioning)
- Reading Recovery and Tier-2 1:1 early-literacy tutoring
- School spending, charters, and what school-level choices actually move outcomes
- School starting age, relative age, and academic redshirting
- Early sport specialization, talent selection, and the relative age effect
The URL is the state — any view you build here is a permalink you can hand to someone mid-argument.