Archive - David Didau: The Learning Spy

Of course the mind is not a computer: no one seriously thinks it is

Why the Computational Theory of Mind is misunderstood and continues to be so important

Jul 26 •

Of course the mind is not a computer: no one seriously thinks it is

Why the Computational Theory of Mind is misunderstood and continues to be so important

Jul 26 •

Repost: What approaches work best with children with special educational needs?

Why what works best for the most vulnerable benefits all children

Jul 24 •

Repost: It's always better to know

The risks and rewards of checking students understand what's been taught

Jul 21 •

Occam's Razor: to cut or not to cut?

On the elegance - and the temptations - of simple explanations

Jul 19 •

The economics of effort: why we don't like thinking hard

How recent research debunks the myth of mental depletion, and what teachers can do to make effort feel worth the price.

Jul 16 •

Monthly round-up #4

15th June - 13th July 2025

Jul 15 •

Is there an "engagement crisis" in schools?

Why chasing 'fun' and 'relevance' could kill learning

Jul 13 •

and

Martin Robinson

Why good people get poor results: the systems that sabotage our best intentions

And the psychology behind our obsession with individuals

Jul 12 •

Cognitive load, conceptual fog: when ideology masquerades as evidence

Alfie Kohn’s critique of explicit instruction and Cognitive Load Theory reveals more about his educational philosophy than about how learning actually…

Jul 10 •

In defence of Cognitive Load Theory

Alfie Kohn misreads both the science and the spirit of Cognitive Load Theory: what he sees as dogma is, in fact, a model of intellectual humility and…

Jul 7 •

Stop misjudging people: the hard truth about how bias works

How the Fundamental Attribution Error makes fools of us all

Jul 6 •

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