Transfer of learning, the process by which people can recognize and apply previously learned information to different situations, is one of the primary goals of education.
Feedback emPower Tools: How to Make Your Feedback Go Further
For today’s blog post, I interviewed Dr Rob Nash who together with Prof Naomi Winstone and Dr Kieran Balloo created the website Feedback emPower Tools. Feedback emPower Tools sets out to help learners engage and process feedback they receive...
GUEST POST: Bridging the Gap: Using the DIGPA Framework to Connect Teaching Practice and the Science of Learning
This article explores a reflective practice tradition that has evolved in English language teacher education. We begin by looking at Practice-Based Teacher Education (PBTE), and then show how a structured reflection process—DIGPA—can connect these practices…
Are You Sure You're Spacing?
Today I’m reviewing a study that recently came out looking at how students choose to use spacing in their own study and how it relates to their performance…
The Learning Scientist Blog TEN YEAR Anniversary!
February 5, 2026 marks the 10 year anniversary of the Learning Scientists Blog. In late January, 2016, Jude Weinstein (who went by Yana at that time) and I started what we thought would be a fun little project to try to help students learn more. We started …
Choice and Mental Effort
Thinking is hard. In general, we don’t like to put forth mental effort when we can avoid it. Further, when we do exert mental effort, we tend to not like it. And yet… there are times when we actually enjoy doing the hard work of thinking through something. There are times when we may even feel we’ve entered into a flow state, where difficult tasks feel relatively effortless (1). How we feel about completing a task appears to be about more than just effort.