Daniel Willingham

Guy I know was complaining about making his 8th grader's lunch. I didn't have presence of mind to say anything so 3 days later I made this. I don't think the guy's is on Twitter, this is my therapy.

"ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info."

We will make America great again if we make America read again.

@S_Oberle @chrisdevers I did not...longitudinal testing of that sounds...hard. But would be a really valuable project.

@DTWillingham @chrisdevers Did you come across anything about desensitization of the salience network? Even when presented with normally triggering stimuli (aka calling someone’s name) some still don’t reflexively attend. Stuck in DMN? Concerning.

Do Students Today Have Reduced Attention Spans? In this American Educator article, I argue they don't. (This piece is mostly a reprint of the one I published last year in Education Next.) aft.org/ae/spring2026/…

I wouldn’t go back to this full time, even if I could. But tools shape thought, and sometimes the friction of analog pays off in the slow contemplation it invites.

@MalcolGate @PaulGarvey4 @supernova2gold e.g. review of "what works vs. what students do" pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26173288/ e.g., student misbeliefs about learning link.springer.com/article/10.375… e.g., review of memory illusions during self-regulated learning pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23020639/

@MalcolGate @PaulGarvey4 @supernova2gold Malcolm, there's actually good evidence that many students do not know effective ways of reading and studying independently. So I think it's quite plausible to suggest that that could be a source of anxiety for some students, and instruction in those methods would help.

When students are anxious/depressed, one method of remediation might be TEACHING THEM TO DO SCHOOL BETTER. Just got this message from a mental health professional.

@PaulGarvey4 @supernova2gold Well, peace and love, Paul. I tried.

@DTWillingham @supernova2gold It is perfectly clear and I’ve repeated it. You have used confirmation bias to justify your opinion. It’s quite commonplace, but worth pointing out when it happens. We shouldn’t and we should put such ‘evidence’ in context, wouldn’t you agree?

@PaulGarvey4 @supernova2gold I still don't understand your objection. Can you explain it more clearly?

@DTWillingham @supernova2gold It’s not in the slightest bit controversial. It’s confirmation bias. And your question to me was plain silly. I don’t know of a single person in education who does not agree that students should complete work independently. Do you?

@PaulGarvey4 @supernova2gold By calling the question "silly" I'll assume the answer is "yes." What I'm advocating is teaching students how to complete work you ask them to do independently. (Failing to do so can be a source of anxiety.) I truly don't see why you think that's controversial.

@DTWillingham @supernova2gold Read my timeline would be the answer to that silly question. But I do know confirmation bias when I see it.

@PaulGarvey4 @supernova2gold Do you think students should ever do any work independently?

@DTWillingham @supernova2gold Yes. I understand completely. You’ve found ‘a therapist’s’ view that fits your own. You should know this is simply confirmation bias. There are huge amounts of therapists who think very differently to this.

@PaulGarvey4 @supernova2gold I don't think you understood the point. The therapist was saying "students can be anxious because they don't have the skills to learn independently." Skills like reading or preparing for an exam. We can teach these skills. The point isn't to make teachers lives easier.

@DTWillingham @supernova2gold Or, of course, schools could do better for the children. But that’s not Daniel, or the traditionalists’ way, is it? Children have to do things for them to make their working lives easier. There’s something deeply wrong with that statement, when you actually think about it.

@JessicaKulynych No, it’s “teach better”

@DTWillingham So "try harder" becomes "try better." Just a tiny band-aid for a global problem.

@rpondiscio Also, many highly regarded authors published fiction in Playboy, a least through the 1980s.

If you worked in magazines, or just subscribed, 50 years ago (and even into the '90s) you can't help noticing the wasteland men's media has become. And not just Playboy. Read an old copy of Esquire, GQ, Sports Illustrated, et al. A golden era, indeed.

@gorge_lilley Willingham, D. T. (2012). How Science Can Improve Teaching. Scientific American, August 21. Willingham, D. T. (2012). When Can You Trust “The Experts?”(Jossey-Bass). and on sci of reading, esp here Willingham, D. T. (2017). The Reading Mind. (Jossey-Bass).

@gorge_lilley Willingham, D. T. (2019). Should teachers know the basic science of how children learn? American Educator, 43(2), 30-36, 43. Willingham, D. T. (2017). A Mental Model of the Learner: Teaching the Basic Science of Educational Psychology . Mind, Brain, & Education, 11(4), 166-175.

Science denialism is not a good look.

Call for papers: Symposium in Toronto on teaching art history. Hope to see you there! arthistory.utoronto.ca/news/call-pape…

Very excited to see this final (experimental) paper on background knowledge and reading comprehension in primary school children - the final output from Dr @Smithre5’s extremely impressive @latrobe #SOLARLab PhD. And it’s #OpenAccess 👏🚀👏