Carl Hendrick
I don’t particularly like the term science of learning. It implies a single cohesive entity with an agreed-upon, codified set of laws or prescriptions, when in reality it’s a loose and evolving body of interdisciplinary research, drawing from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, education, and design. It offers probabilistic insights, not fixed rules.
However, those different disciplines often converge on similar instructional implications such as the importance of managing cognitive load, using retrieval practice to enhance memory, providing worked examples to reduce unnecessary problem-solving strain, spacing learning over time, and ensuring that novices receive explicit, guided instruction before being asked to solve problems independently.
I was five years into my career as a teacher working in an inner-city London school before I learned any of this, and it profoundly changed my practice. I later discovered that many teachers are in the same boat – they were never taught how learning happens, and like me, want to teach their students better, by using approaches grounded in evidence rather than fads, intuition or well-meaning but unproven methods.
However, despite the substantial empirical support underpinning the core elements of learning, there remains a persistent undercurrent of scepticism among some educators. This scepticism often manifests in critiques that systematically overlook the considerable evidence base supporting these methodologies.
