3-Read Friday #102

Cognitive realism, Engelmann, and an AI summit

Here are three blog posts that I found interesting this week.

1. The Teaching Method That Can’t Fail by Barbara Oakley

Barbara is one of my heroes, so it is great to see her launch her newsletter on Substack. And what a first post! Barbara argues that constructivism’s unfalsifiable structure has allowed ineffective discovery-based teaching to persist despite contrary evidence, and proposes “cognitive realism” — evidence-accountable instruction aligned with how the brain actually learns — as the necessary alternative.

2. What Education Can Learn From Zig Engelmann by Dylan Kane

If 3-Read Friday were a drinking game, downing a shot every time Engelmann’s was mentioned would leave you in a pretty bad way. Dylan argues that Engelmann’s most important legacy is not Direct Instruction itself, but his process of obsessive content analysis and relentless empirical testing — an approach teachers and curriculum designers should adopt to move beyond generic pedagogy toward content-specific, evidence-driven instruction.

3. Highlights from Stanford’s AI+Education Summit by Dan Meyer

Dan reports from Stanford’s AI+Education Summit that the field is sobering up to the reality that AI tools risk harming learning and self-belief, and argues — as with MOOCs before — that technology cannot substitute for the human relationships at the heart of effective education.

Have a great weekend!

Craig

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