Dr. Daniel Willingham | University of Virginia - Transcript
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Jeremy Singer: I'm Jeremy Singer, president of the College Board, and this is the Education Equation. I've spent my career grappling with what truly drives student success. On this podcast, I'll talk with people who are researching, building and scaling solutions that matter. Every episode will go beyond the hype and focus on data and evidence to see what's actually working.
Let's stop guessing and let's figure out what works. Today's conversation is a little different and long overdue. We talk a lot on this podcast about programs, innovations, tools, and systems, but underneath all of it's a more fundamental question. What does cognitive science actually tell us about how students learn? And how much of that knowledge are we truly using in [00:01:00] classrooms?
My guest today is Dr. Daniel Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and one of the most influential voices translating cognitive science to educators. He has many books, the one I know best is Why Don't Students Like School? And it has shaped a generation of teachers and school leaders.
In it he argues that memory is the residue of thought, that background knowledge is essential for comprehension, and that many popular education reforms misunderstood how the mind actually works. Dan has spent his career grappling with a central challenge. How do we responsibly translate research findings into real classrooms without oversimplifying the science or overpromising the impact?
In today's conversation, we'll explore why students don't naturally enjoy thinking and why that's not a criticism. The difference between knowing a research finding and implementing it well, how background knowledge shapes reading comprehension, where educators may misapply cognitive science, [00:02:00] and where researchers may overgeneralize, and what all this means for curriculum assessment and instructional design.
This is a conversation about constraints, about what the mind can and cannot do, and about what it would look like to design schools around how students actually learn. Dr. Daniel Willingham, welcome to the Education Equation.
Dan Willingham: Thanks so much. Really happy to be here.
Jeremy Singer: So Dan, this is the first time I've had a true cognitive scientist on the podcast.
much of this show has been about separating hype from evidence, but today I want to talk about something that's more subtle, why even good evidence so often fails to change what happens in the classroom. So you're trained as a cognitive science, but you spent a very large part of your career translating those findings into the classroom.
And this is not necessarily the default path for most researchers. So I'm curious, what pushed you in that direction? Was there a moment where you thought, this is what I wanna do?
Dan Willingham: [00:03:00] Yeah, no, it is not, a typical career path at all. we're not trained to do this.
And for, many of us who are in academia, it's, it's not what we are hired to do. there absolutely was a distinct moment when I decided I wanted to,basically change, the path of my career. so I'll take a moment to tell this story 'cause it's funny.
So I had met with Ed Hirsch, and Don Hirsch will of course be well known to everybody in this audience. but merely because we were both lived in Charlottesville and so I was a new assistant professor at the University of Virginia. Don of course, had been here for many years and, had already started the Core Knowledge Foundation and Don was a huge fan of cognition and thought like cognitive psychology is gonna save education.
Okay. I'm a memory researcher. I don't know anything about education at all. So Don wants to come talk to me and I'm like, sure. I actually had bought cultural literacy when I was in graduate school. Yeah. So I knew him as like the author of this bestseller. So I'm like, Ooh, that's kinda like cool and [00:04:00] fun for me.
Anyway, so we chat and I, after a time I'm like, this guy is more enthusiastic about cognition than I am. Like, this guy really thinks that there's a lot of potential here. Okay. So this is when he's getting ready to write, the schools we need and why we don't have them, which came out in 1996.
So I forget about it. this conversation, we talked several times.
Jeremy Singer: Sure.
Dan Willingham: Now flash forward to 2001. Don calls me and says, the foundation has an annual conference, how'd you like to come and talk about cognitive psychology to 500 teachers? And I said, I don't know anything about, educated classrooms or whatever.
And does, no, it's, sorry. we get that. We just think the teachers would find it interesting. So rashly I'm like, okay, sure. like I've got an ego. I'm like, sure, I'll come to Nashville and tell a bunch of people about cognitive psychology. and matters, higher stakes for me personally, I had just started dating a [00:05:00] teacher and we've been going out a few months and I'm like, why don't you come to Nashville with me and you can watch me give this talk to all these teachers.
Jeremy Singer: I'm really wondering where this is going now. But keep going. I'm loving
Dan Willingham: it. Oh my God. Yeah. , So she says yes. Like I said, we've been dating like two or three months or something. I don't even, anyway, I get to Nashville and I'm. What am I gonna say? We're like, it is a week before, and I'm like, okay, I can't get out of this, but I have no idea what I'm possibly gonna say.
So I literally go to the introduction to cognition course that I've been teaching at the University of Virginia for, a decade now. and I just pluck out stuff that kind of seems relevant to education to me, and that I think is fun for a one hour talk. I'm like, that's gonna be my talk.
So I get there. The reason I went into the thing about inviting the new girlfriend, who's the teacher, to show you how nervous I was, like, 30 minutes before the talk I said to her, you can't come, this is just gonna be a train wreck. I, don't want you to [00:06:00] watch me do this. Okay. So I go and give the talk of, again, stuff that's like straight out of the very first course you would take on learning at the University of Virginia.
And to my astonishment. These teachers don't know any of this stuff. Yeah. They think it's very interesting and very applicable to their classrooms. And it was that reaction that made me realize how, how can my field have done such a terrible job of communicating what we know to educators.
and I decided I was, that I wanted to make a greater effort to do that.
Jeremy Singer: I love the story. I love that you picked up the mantle you're the modern day voice of the cognitive science movement in education. I'm glad you went.
What happened to the girlfriend?
Dan Willingham: we've been married for 22 years. Oh yeah.
Jeremy Singer: All right, good. I was a little nervous asking that question, so I'm glad it ended Well. awesome. So that gets me to, cognitive science. has produced a fairly [00:07:00] robust set of findings around learning, around memory, about what works, through research.
And I, had a similar, I think it was 2008 and I was working at McGraw Hill and we had bunch of,professors of biology courses and we're talking about textbooks. And we had Professor Bob Bjork from UCLA present, and I remember being in the audience and he talked about these different studies about spacing and interleaving, and for the listeners, those are, methods and we may get into that, that, boost, learning knowledge retention.
But I'm there and I'm like, enchanted by what he's talking about. This is so cool. And so when it ends, I rush up there these are great findings. And I thought, must be hot off the presses. And it's just not yet been implemented in classrooms or I haven't seen it implemented because it's so new.
And I said, Bob, when, did you do this? And he's this study was in 1972 and this was in 84. they were not new. And it was like stunning to me this disconnect about this [00:08:00] great research, yet it not, being implemented or inherited or transferred to the school. So it's not surprising that when you spoke to a group in the early aughts that they, stuff that you thought was pretty fundamental had it reached it.
You've actually, I'm gonna quote you I'll only do this once in this podcast, but you've said the mind is at last yielding its secrets to persistent scientific investigation. We have learned more in the last 25 years about how the mind works than we did in the proceeding 2,500 years. there's a ton that's been, figured out by researchers.
but I would argue, not that much has been translated into instructional practices. So help the listeners understand why is there that huge gap?
Dan Willingham: I think there are two, quite separate questions and, both are relevant. one question is how much of that, of what we know should be implemented in classrooms?
and this is something that,, I've also written about, I think of, David Daniel, now at National Science Foundation, program officer there formerly of, James Madison University has written about this probably more than I have, what he [00:09:00] says is we already have a science of learning.
We really need a science of teaching. And what he means by that is,at bottom it's very intuitive. You can't just take. A finding from the laboratory and plop it into a classroom. and there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that in the laboratory, everything is controlled.
We're controlling variables. And in a classroom, much less, almost nothing, right? Is completely controlled. and so you do need to think carefully how things are gonna be implemented, because you can get unexpected,results of what is, could be helpful for memory.
for example, the problem with spacing. Spacing helps memory spacing's not terrific for motivation. and the reaction you get when you try and do spacing in a classroom is immediately from students. We already did this. why do we have to do this again? We've already, we seem to have mastered that
Jeremy Singer: let me just interrupt. Can you just explain for listeners what spacing is?
Dan Willingham: Oh, sorry. Yeah. [00:10:00] Spacing just means revisiting content that you've seen before. And the easiest way to think about it is if you think, I want my students to spend five hours on this particular, set of vocabulary words in Spanish or something.
You can either. have those five hours be on an hour a day on successive days, or they can be on once a week on successive Mondays for five Mondays. And spacing refers to the fact that you're gonna get more enduring learning if you space the, content, the presentations out. and so if that wasn't clear that now it's clear why, you end up with motivation problems,when you try and implement spacing.
So you can't, again, this is not to say that means spacing won't work. It just means like you have to be thoughtful about, how you implement it.
Jeremy Singer: Lemme Just add to that. It was one funny thing, a lot of people probably are familiar with space repetition is another way of talking about it.
Yeah. I asked that was one of the things,Bob [00:11:00] shared about this laboratory or this research and I asked him the same question, many years ago. And it was funny 'cause he was teaching a biology class at UCLA. I said, do you implement it? He's yeah, I tried.
And he said, I took the lab and I spaced it away from when I covered the content, with the idea that, it's a version of that, So it was a couple weeks later, they had to revisit the content in the lab as opposed to putting them,next to each other. And he said, students killed him on Rate My Professor.
And so he said he stopped doing it. another challenge of doing this.
Dan Willingham: That's right. That's absolutely right. another thing to think about is that when you talk about implementing cognitive science principles in the laboratory, naturally classrooms are very dynamic environments.
And the, best laid plans of mice, men and teachers can and do go awry. And so you need to be able to adjust how you implement anything. on the fly, based on [00:12:00] the feedback, you're getting moment by moment from the students. And that means if it's a cognitive science principle, that means you need to not only understand, oh, that means you do it this way.
You need to understand what the underlying principle is so that if something needs to change, you can make changes that don't get at the heart of,whatever really underlies, spaced repetition or whatever it is. and that's a significant challenge right now because most teachers, we don't have great data on this, but the data we do have indicates most teachers do not understand, cognition at all, They don't, have a, solid background in that, so that you can say, okay, now here's the, you basically understand working memory and you understand how memory works. Lemme tell you about this, new finding or this way, this thing that you might be able to implement in your classroom.
it's not necessarily gonna make sense to many teachers. So that's, another difficulty.
Jeremy Singer: And, so your points are, if I can summarize, one is the classroom is so different from [00:13:00] the lab, and so there's so many factors. So like it's very hard to, manage it. I wanna come back to that in a second.
and then the second is, you want the teachers, because nothing ever goes exactly to plan. You want the teachers to really understand the underlying reason for whatever the practice is. So if they need to pivot, they're not just, using their own intuition, which is, could be dangerous 'cause it could be actually counterproductive, but understand the science of whatever they're trying to do.
is that a fair summary?
Dan Willingham: Yeah, that's a great summary. Yeah.
Jeremy Singer: so going back I guess going back to both of 'em. Superintendents listen to this. and they get, most superintendents I've talked to will say, I'm not an expert, cognitive scientist, but I know there's research out there about how students learn and, spacing is one, repetition, et cetera.
Dan, help me if I'm a superintendent, what, can I do? I don't just throw up my hands. what would be the thing or what have you seen where it's been done the best?
Dan Willingham: Two main things come to mind immediately. One [00:14:00] is, to look for curricular materials that are grounded in cognitive science so that, whatever it is teachers are working with have been put together in ways that respect,what we know about how children think.
that sounds easy when I say it that way. Yeah, it's not easy. If you, the superintendent feel like, yeah, I don't know this stuff, that's not my job, which of course it isn't. getting sound advice is really essential because everybody's gonna tell you, every vendor is gonna tell you, absolutely this is aligned with cognitive science. and it's also aligned with DEI and it's aligned with, the angels
Jeremy Singer: check every box.
Yeah,
Dan Willingham: exactly. And, and it's common core friendly if that's what you're into. so yeah, finding, someone who, has the knowledge and the, wherewithal to really examine these curricula. there, there have been attempts to try and make that kind of information publicly available.
And [00:15:00] they've, really been mixed. ed Reports was,
at the very early days, like before the organization was launched. That was the idea of what Ed Reports was gonna be, and then it really just became common core alignment. And now most people think it just means whether or not the curriculum's any good, which is, as far as I can see, is not really what it means.
I'm not sure there's a, readily available public resource for superintendents. They're gonna have to, find someone to help them.
The, second thing you can do is start where you are and, I, always think it's a good idea if you are in a district where, there's not a lot of sentiment for this sort of, coming in top down and saying, okay, now we're all gonna learn CogSci.
That, is viewed as a fad. It's viewed as the next thing. And if I wait long enough like this Yeah. Superintendent to leave, the, places where I've seen it take hold most successfully is where you start with a coalition of the willing. You start with the teachers [00:16:00] who are pretty interested in this and start small scale.
And when they start feeling like they're seeing success in their classroom and talking to their peers, that's when you get more people interested.
Jeremy Singer: have you seen much in ed schools changing over the years where there's a greater, grounding for teachers do you see that much more prominent in those schools?
Dan Willingham: some, yeah. It's still, not at all to the point that I would like, again, when I came into this field in 2001, it was, I felt like there was nothing happening by way of, cognitive science being emphasized. the missing piece, I think it's really fundamental to the way schools of education are structured.
And this goes back to when we stopped having, normal schools and training, started being developed into universities with broader missions. There was this view at the time that, sounds good, which is, let's bring in everybody who's interested in education under one roof.
And so you've got, political [00:17:00] scientists and psychologists and economists and, today, not, at that time, but today, people from critical theory and people from, throughout the humanities. And these people have not only different, ways of describing the world.
They have different, senses of what it means to know something. So if you're a teacher candidate, you're exposed to all of these different ways of understanding how people learn, what's the best way to, to educate children and so on. and I think there's this, naive, hope that somehow teacher educators will work this out and, come to some epiphany.
Whereas I think what really happens is they conclude, quite rationally, no one really understands any of this stuff all that deeply. And you, hear these different things from different people and you can pick and choose. Yeah. and even when you get very narrow and look at like educational psychology [00:18:00] courses that are offered in schools of Ed, you see the same thing.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. It's interesting 'cause like you'd almost want cognitive science to be like the fundamental laws, the gravity of the, these other things are, or theories or so forth. But it gets mixed into, it becomes one of eight different things, which I, see how that makes it challenging.
cognitive science has gone awry is actually there's actually harm. another thing is we, talked about,the use of images and texts, and so there is research, right? That, for comprehension, it's actually in many cases, if you can present image and text, it's gonna lead to better comprehension.
But there's an art to that, or I should say there's a science to that and what, you see some people get, oh, I just need to put images in the middle of text, and if they do it wrong. It's actually could be worse than no images at all. It creates, cognitive load issues, whatever it may be.
Yeah it's almost be careful you're [00:19:00] applying, cognitive science to your teaching, or to your programs, and it actually counterproductive
Dan Willingham: that's exactly right. And so this is why one of the things I'm always looking for when I'm thinking about is this a candidate finding from the literature that would be useful to educators is not just is it really reliable?
Are we fairly sure that this phenomenon , is consistent and, ,controllable, but then also is it, universal not oh, it applies, when it's foreign language, it works, right? But then I'll give you an example of what you described, of, pictures and texts going together.
you get individual differences among students being relevant here too. So one of the interesting findings is when, we first started developing the ability for students to be able to look at three dimensional structures on a screen. you would think that it would be really helpful if I could like, see a three dimensional molecule on the screen and rotate it [00:20:00] myself versus what you used to have in textbooks, which is have a couple of different two dimensional pictures where I'm supposed to piece.
it turns out having the 3D thing you can manipulate does help if you have good visual working memory. If you don't, what happens is you get overwhelmed and you'd actually be better off with the two dimensional pictures. so yeah, this is the kind of thing you're talking about.
Jeremy Singer: I, hope everybody listening knows the difference between working in long-term memory, but can you give the 30 second just for Yeah,
Dan Willingham: sure.
yeah, long-term memory is, stuff that you know in the long term, things that are in your memory, including, stuff from school and, every day. things like how to turn on a lamp as well as personal memories like what you had for breakfast this morning. Working memory is what is in mind as your thinking, whereas long term memory is potentially infinite.
There's no limit to what you remember and learn. Working memory is very, limited. So when you're trying to, for [00:21:00] example, appreciate the three dimensional structure of a molecule. if the molecule has lots of parts that gets confusing and working memory gets overwhelmed,
Jeremy Singer: working memory, that's great.
my interest is piqued about this idea of some sort of, independent rater of the strength of materials or structural practices from a cognitive science standpoint. I've, thought about this a lot in a lot of different contexts , and, y when I was at Kaplan, it was interesting 'cause,we hired Br who, I'm sure and, uh, Didi Chari and this guy Larry Redman.
We had a whole team focused on the cognitive science into the Kaplan programs and it's very hard even there in a more controlled place, it was very hard to, show we did these things instructionally stronger and it should lead to better outcomes. We spent a lot of money on it. it was hard to prove the outcomes.
And we had a competitor at the time in Princeton Review, who basically spent the 20 million we were spending in cognitive science on marketing, just saying, these outcomes. And it was [00:22:00] like an impossible thing. 'cause like they actually convinced more people. 'cause they were just saying they did the things, whereas they did.
and, again, I'm not trying to claim we, solved, there was good work done, but it was still, hard. let me shift. the book, why Don't Students Like School, is a wonderful book. It was, I think it came out in 2009. I've read it many times. I've. Gifted it, I bought it and gifted it to at least a hundred people in my career.
Wow. I, was trying to think, the only other book, maybe in competition that I've bought and gifted was Moneyball,just 'cause a big fan, so I want to go a little bit more directly into that. The title of your book it suggests a critique of schooling itself.
but the thesis is obviously much more nuanced. So what is the core, idea of the book? That, educators most often miss?
Dan Willingham: Yeah. I've gotten more criticism about the title of that book than,anything else in my career. the core idea it actually came from a conversation with Don Hirsch. So I told you that Don was, so [00:23:00] taken with cognitive psychology and at some point I said, Don, candidly, I think you get a little more worked up about this than you should. It's not the be all and end all.
And I said, if, I wanted to write down everything I thought a teacher should know about cognitive psychology, I think I could do it on half a piece of paper. and Don blinked and, was brought up short and he said, I'd like to see that half a piece of paper. and that was the inspiration for the book.
So there are nine chapters and there are, nine principles of cognitive psychology that I think are broad enough and reliable enough and apply across ages, across context, that they're pretty much always gonna be true. that I thought teachers should know. So that was the premise of the book.
Jeremy Singer: That's great. Yeah. there are so much content in this book I think we could have a 10 episode series, or I guess a nine episode series, one on and I'd love to do that, but I doubt [00:24:00] my listeners would spend the time or whether you're really interested in spending that amount of time.
so what I wanna do is a little popcorn style here and,hit on some things that either myself or some of my colleagues who are also big fans said, Hey, you gotta ask Dan about this. and I hope I get these right in the framing, but please correct me as well. So one thing is,that we all found really interesting is you argue that real thinking real problem solving is, hard work and individual students are naturally adverse to it because it's slow.
it's uncertain the effort, connection to the results. Yeah. And, relatedly, what much of what we call problem solving is actually, we're, retrieving,memory from know as opposed to real deep thinking Yeah. On the spot. So can you explain all that?
Dan Willingham: Your brain is really not, even though you're very, good at thinking compared to other species, your brain is not really set up to think. Your brain is set up to save you from having to think. because thinking is slow, thinking is hazardous. when you're thinking you're, you're in [00:25:00] trouble.
this is not the situation of choice. You would much rather have recognized the situation and, say, oh, I've been in this situation before and I know what to do here. I have a successful strategy to meet my goals here. and this is why most of the time you're on autopilot because most of what you do every day is stuff that you've done before.
So I can't remember whether it's in this book or in that book, or another one that I give the example, you come out in the morning and you, first thing I do is make coffee. I'm not creative, I don't think and problem solve, right? And think okay, Dan,, is the filter really the best thing to put in here?
what if you put in something like, oh, I could do a paper towel, I could use a piece of lettuce. what would happen if I put lettuce in instead of a filter? You don't think that again, because it's, time consuming. It's effortful and, it's unlikely to be better than what you [00:26:00] just do habitually.
and so this is the, challenge that we face in school. There really is a bias not to think that said. Curiosity is a real thing. And we are, like many species, we have , a natural inclination towards curiosity, but we're not curious about everything because exploring curiosity, demands resources too.
it's effortful to satisfy your curiosity, right? And so the feeling of curiosity is the sense that if I put a little work into this, I'm going to gain some understanding of my situation that is going to be valuable to me. So this is a difference between knowing and understanding, knowing new stuff.
You're not interested in knowing new stuff for the sake of knowing new stuff. Most people aren't. You're interested in new understandings, because understanding gives you leverage in your environment, allows you to act more effectively. [00:27:00]
Jeremy Singer: if I understand correctly, I hope I do the unlock for a teacher.
If you're saying, Hey, I really want the student to think hard, to really problem solve, it's how do I get them curious about the subject so that they're gonna
Dan Willingham: Yeah.
Jeremy Singer: dedicate the amount of effort dedicated effort to solve a problem. Is that fair?
Dan Willingham: Yes, it is. And I dunno have to tell you, that's very challenging for most educators, except for the very youngest, we're talking about one thing that goes into motivation, which is this momentary, sense of curiosity.
But that's not the only contributor to motivation, another contributor is my personal history in school and the sense that. this has paid off in the past. This is in a setting, an environment in which curiosity, satisfied is rewarding and feels good. Versus, oh, this is a setting where I have felt curious and then it hasn't worked out for me.
And I've ended up feeling shame [00:28:00] and, I've ended up feeling terrible about myself and I've been ridiculed because I tried to learn something. I failed and then I felt bad about it. you always have to bear in mind there's, there's another tendency of the mind when we see something that kind of works, we think it's everything.
So curiosity's great. Curiosity is not everything when it comes to motivation.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. And, we talk a lot at college. Board of, what we see when we talk to our members is, it's harder and harder for students to see the relevance of what they're doing in school today, more so today than ever. And I would even say with AI even more students always complained about what they were being taught, but it seems like it's hyper now of I don't see this connection. And so I guess are we failing more today in creating the curiosity, the motivation than before? Is it just harder to do that? how do you think about that at the sort of macro level?
Dan Willingham: Yeah, this is something everybody's worried about. it is become, especially acute post [00:29:00] COVID, everybody I talk to is seeing it. There's limited data even just establishing that it's a real thing. and when I keep saying it, to summarize the, phenomenon that you captured, that students seem less motivated, they seem less willing to undertake.
Work that they're asked to do in school. I don't know anybody who has a really good story about what's happening here. yeah. It's not just COVID and, COVID shut down because we're, seeing it independent of how long schools were closed in the US , we're seeing it in Australia where their shutdown was minimal.
so it's not that, but what's led to it? I don't know. Yeah. I'll also comment briefly. I, urge educators to avoid the trap of the need for students to see immediate relevance in what they're learning. adults decide what students need to learn long term. I don't see any reason to expect that students would [00:30:00] necessarily understand it all.
It's wonderful when students see, students timeframe on this is usually like a couple of days max. That's right. Of when it's gonna be helpful. I think motivating students has to happen independent of that. And if they make the argument, I don't see the relevance to that,
Jeremy Singer: Be, careful not to over, channel just, what the students want this may be a crude analogy, but medicine doesn't always taste good, and if you are just trying to serve their immediate desires, you may not, you may miss a key instructional
Dan Willingham: thing.
Yeah. There's, a lot of, there's a lot of content that I think is, not only in the long term. useful but also beautiful and worth knowing and will help them understand, the human condition themselves that they don't understand right away and they don't see the relevance of right away and why should they Their novices, of course, they don't understand it.
Jeremy Singer: have you seen or there instances when you think about this ability I mean I'm [00:31:00] sure we could go to like very specific examples and maybe that's the best, but are there broader or other schools or districts or efforts you've seen that are particularly effective of figuring out how to engage the student in their learning and give them motivation?
Dan Willingham: I've certainly been to schools and classrooms that Yeah. are brilliant at, that, And I don't know that I've put the question to them in exactly that way. my sense is just from having talked to lots of teachers in school, the people who do it best are quick to deny that there's a secret sauce, And they say it's really a matter of, having taught this, poem for many, years and paying a very close attention to how students react. And I stumbled onto the, so in other words, it's just, it's this slow accretion experience of technique and experience.
Yeah.
Jeremy Singer: And ability to adapt as you see what works. Yeah, [00:32:00] I have 24-year-old twins and when they were, , in K 12, they often struggled to see the relevance. And I try my best to be a supportive parent, what about longer term?
Is it effective to try to hold out longer term outcomes? No. Or is it?
Dan Willingham: No. there are two, problems
first of all, let me say that,it's, ineffective, because kids have a very, short time window where reward is meaningful, right?
This is why every first grade teacher discovers, if it's Tuesday and you promise kids a pizza party on Friday,as a reward for good behavior. Friday is the fricking moon. To a first grader. And so the timeframe just doesn't make any sense at all you can start doing that a little more successfully when they're middle schoolers, they're high schoolers, but then it's it really becomes an implicit threat.
And it's like you need to, this is gonna help you get into a good college. And, kids start to, [00:33:00] internalize this pressure and they start to have feelings about education that most parents in calmer moments would say, this is not what I want the driving engine to be. I want my children to love learning, not to be afraid for their future.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. We could go deep and we won't have time now, but we could go into intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and the dangers of either, yeah. So there's, a
Dan Willingham: lot here. the other thing we could go into is how similar is the type of cognitive tasks that you do? In school compared to what you're gonna be doing outta school.
When you talk about preparation for future, that's another whole interesting topic.
Jeremy Singer: Say, I'd love you to say a couple things about that. ' I hadn't been thinking of that what I find on some of these, like the long term motivations, like some of these are just counterintuitive to what I think individuals think.
Oh, you explain if you do this, you're going to, be very successful in life and da and yeah, it goes in one ear out the other. But, so tell me about the, piece of how much do you want the activity to be similar [00:34:00] what they will actually do externally?
Dan Willingham: Yeah. So There are a couple things.
First, just baseline findings, performance in school is predictive of success outside of school. If you look at like job performance ratings, you look at how quickly people ascend in their career, pretty much any outcome that you care about. yeah,
Jeremy Singer: and by the way, SAT scores particularly SAT math scores are predictive of college success and, career success as well, which is
Dan Willingham: Oh, yes, oh yes.
so that's the first thing to know. It's not that, because you do sometimes hear you learn all this, you learn that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell who give, that's not gonna help you when you're trying to be or whatever. there's something, it may not, the mitochondria in particular may not be it, but there's something about school.
Jeremy Singer: But it's great for zone two training, by the way, as a little plug here for health fanatics.
Dan Willingham: Good to know. that said, there are clear differences of the sorts of, cognitive tasks that you generally engage [00:35:00] in school versus. the kinds of things that are important in life.
So , one of the things that's very important in life is decision making, right? So you have to, do things like, lots of people remember the very first time you got a job and you go down to HR and they're saying, all right, here's these health plans. Which one do you want? And you just, you usually, you have moments to decide, and you don't know how to make a decision like that, right?
Yeah. And this is, really, it would be very helpful at that moment to understand something about probabilities, to understand something about risk, and decision making. throughout almost any career you have, as well as your personal life is gonna be important. Schools don't really teach anything about decision making.
Schools teach problem solving, but they teach a different, the, problems have particular characteristics. So the problems are usually not dynamic, whereas problem in the workforce problems are frequently dynamic. Meaning, if I. Try some. So suppose I'm a manager [00:36:00] and like people in my unit are, unhappy and dissatisfied.
So I'm trying to do something to boost morale. anything I do, if it doesn't work, I can't undo it and come back to the starting right one. Whereas in school, typically, these problems are very punctate, you do something and then the, problem is over. As opposed to this sort of long-term dynamic situation, you usually don't have complete information, out in the real world.
In school. You either have complete information or if you don't, it's understood. You don't have complete, so I'm only grading you based on what you knew. we could go on, but you get the idea. And there have been, people, there have been movements to try to make the kinds of things you do with school more similar to what you do outside of school.
But there are problems in doing that as well. There's a reason school looks the way.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. that all resonates. And it also, what I find slightly depressing, I hadn't thought of this angle, but, wealth has such an impact on learning and students who come [00:37:00] from a family whose parents have money and went to college, we know all the research of more money spent on those students.
They have more learning opportunities, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. We also know they're more likely to be able, once they get to the workforce, to have connections to their first job and importance of the network and so forth. What I hadn't thought until that moment is, it's obvious, and I've thought about, but not as, quite as blatantly, which is when 22-year-old has to fill out a HR form and they don't know what to do, My kids would've called me and I could give them counsel, but a lot, can't. let me go to another big topic. You write, about the importance of, factual, procedural and conceptual knowledge, and all being critical skills, for a successful learner. So can you briefly explain what those things are and what they mean in practice?
Dan Willingham: factual knowledge is knowledge about the world, and it's, things like, what a flash drive is and, just, literally, bits and pieces that,, sound like trivia, but turn out to [00:38:00] be enormously important for thinking or a real engine of thinking.
we, tend to think of thinking as a skill. and a skill in the sense that you can plug it in to apply it to any content. and that turns out not to be true. and when you say what the counter is that, seems obviously true, which is you're much better at thinking about things you know, something about than topics you don't know anything about.
That turns out to be very, true. Procedural knowledge is, there's actually a slightly different meaning of it, a technical meaning of it in cognitive psychology. And, I think the way I've used it when I've written about education, it just means knowing how to do things. And this is sort of skill-based knowledge.
And, metacognition refers to thinking about thinking. So this is where you know how to do something and you can reflect on the fact. That you know how to do it, and you can talk about the way that this is an effective way of doing that. So sometimes you know how to do things, you don't really know exactly why or how, you know how to do 'em with procedural knowledge, you do, and you can, talk about it. and then [00:39:00] conceptual knowledge is, where this is again, a, variety of factual knowledge. but the knowledge is more flexible. So it's understanding category. So your concept of a dog, is not particular to any one breed. and this is an instance where you may not be great at talking about exactly what they all have in common, but you can recognize a dog when you see it.
Conceptual knowledge is, frequently underrated in terms of its importance to cognition, but when you think about it. Most of the time when you encounter things in the world, you've never seen this exact thing before. So every apple I see is in some sense a new apple. I've never seen this apple before, but, it's very, helpful that I have this concept of the general idea of an apple, because that allows me to say, oh, that's an apple.
And now everything that I know about apples I've encountered in the past, I can assume are true of this apple. [00:40:00] That apple, even though I can't see it, that apple's got seeds inside of it. 'cause apples always do. So conceptual knowledge, also very important to cognition.
Jeremy Singer: And, how different are the strategies, if you're a teacher trying to teach?
all three are important. You need all, what? Yeah. How would you advise a teacher to make sure they're. adequately approaching this?
Dan Willingham: Yeah, it's a great question. there are a few things that you need to do for conceptual knowledge in particular. and this is, I think like the standard things that teachers are told to do are actually pretty useful.
for conceptual knowledge, you wanna show both positive and negative examples. You wanna have, a broad set of examples. and, the, places where that hasn't been very successful in American education are actually, I think, really instructive. So one of the, banner findings in mathematics is that many American students don't know what the equal sign means.
Yeah. and the most [00:41:00] common misconception is that it shows you where the answer is supposed to go. And the reason for that is a failure of conceptual learning. Students only see equal sign with a bunch of stuff on the left, then the equal sign, and then blank space, and that's what leads to the misimpression about it.
So you want them to see all the possible uses of equal sign. so in
Jeremy Singer: that instance, it would really be spending time early on, and I've seen this in some math curriculum where they do it really well, where Hey, this is what equal means, this side and this. Got it.
Dan Willingham: Yeah. Really getting at equality. Absolutely.
Jeremy Singer: so, AI, is this incredible tool available. Let's just make the assumption that it's gonna. continue to evolve very quickly and be more and more powerful.
and this I know is more speculative. we don't have the research yet. But does, the ability that now let's assume a student, anybody can lean into any LLM to get information. [00:42:00] Does it change in your view, like between factual procedural conceptual knowledge? Does it change the weighting of like, where we should be teaching more?
Or is it too early to tell? I'm just curious how you think about that.
Dan Willingham: Yeah, generally, am not a futurist,with ai, I feel like, if you care about education, you have no choice but to make some guesses about what all this means because it's, it's, not like smart boards.
Where it was like, we can either opt in or not. It's like everyone's got it. , all of us in education are like, Hey, I wasn't asked about this, whether this was okay with me. but, here we are. so yeah, my sense is that a huge problem that students have access to this.
we, began our conversation with the general bias to, reduce cognitive load and to do things an easier way. And, uh, that's of course what AI does and, the way that you, [00:43:00] learn how to do things does entail cognitive struggle. so the main thing that I don't really conceptualize it the way you described, of does this change the balance of the different types of knowledge in terms of what students need?
instead I think about what have we been used to doing in classrooms that we can't really do anymore? the most notable thing is asking students to go home and write something.
Jeremy Singer: Right.
Dan Willingham: and writing, puts helpful cognitive demands on students in a way that other tasks do not.
And so I'm quite worried about that.
Jeremy Singer: you focused on and we are extremely, I think everybody in the educational space is extremely anxious that if you have this, first of all, back to our relevance conversation, if students find education less relevant, so they're less motivated to engage in it, and then you provide them this crutch or this tool.
That lets 'em do well without [00:44:00] engaging. And you talked about how thinking is hard and takes wor, we've created almost the worst of all worlds. ' and then you add great inflation, which we see in high schools all across the country and in colleges too. It's a, terrible brew.
so agree on all, of that. We are actually working as many orgs are working on, a way to,teach writing and assess writing where you force the students to do some parts without ai, for all the cognitive development that you need, which is critical. 'cause if you outsource it from the start, you're gonna be in trouble later.
I will argue too, and we don't probably have time to get into it, but I do think it will change what you need to be successful in the workforce and so forth when you have ai. And so some of the skills, and practices that we're more important. Pre AI may be less important, but that's there's a lot there. Yeah. I wanna go on an angle with AI that we're in now. so one piece with ai, there's what they call AI slop, but, just in general, we're asking everybody, including students [00:45:00] to, critically evaluate content. so we've always done that.
now that AI's producing so much, and a lot of the content that's produced frankly, isn't, necessarily correct. I could tell you a lot of scary stories I've had. so we're asking, a lot of educators are asking students to evaluate the output for logic, consistencies, for accuracy, for biases, et cetera, et cetera.
and in fact, many orgs, and we've considered, doing this, we haven't, but are, releasing AI literacy frameworks. And I'm curious, as you think about it, and we go back to like domain knowledge and all of that, how realistic is it to think that, student could learn and practice these skills? how much is gonna be, content knowledge specific, versus the ability to assess the AI output broadly?
Is that a teachable skill? How would we think about that?
Dan Willingham: the easy guess is I think probably the right guess, which is, a little bit of a mix. In other words, there are parts of it that you can teach that would be a generalizable skill.
I, say that because, that's the way it's turned out in terms of vetting [00:46:00] information from the internet generally. I, predicted incorrectly on this, by the way. I thought it was all gonna be domain specific. and. Sam Weinberg at Stanford University in particular, has been very successful in proving that had that wrong, and that there are some tactics that you can teach students that are generalizable, regarding, figuring out is this website, reliable or not.
And so I suspect the same. So I, think it's, judging whether artificial intelligence output or LLM, output is reliable, is gonna have some of the same flavor. that said, there is some domain specificity to it as well, and you understand more, especially when you talk about,an essay written by, an AI chat bot and students evaluating it if they know something about the topic, everything we know about reading comprehension indicates you're gonna be more successful.
'cause you're just gonna understand the claims better if you know something about it.
Jeremy Singer: So the, content knowledge is so important and we can [00:47:00] put Sam Weinberg's research in the show notes, so there's a general, you could be taught to be able to evaluate the output in general, but obviously the specific knowledge adds to that.
Yeah. Let me ask you something about critical thinking. It's something we're exploring and I, think a, lot, of orgs are exploring, , college board through our advanced placement and SAT and PSAT and CLEP and Accuplacer, we have two tools, two assessment tools.
We have a, multiple choice and we have a free response question and we have many versions of that. But those are our mechanisms to assess and, Assess at scale, I should say. And now,I think where AI could provide is new assessment tools. we talk about a Socratic bot to mimic what a oral exam or, a defending your thesis kind of piece.
We talk about simulations, which I know have been out there, but really expensive to do. But AI may change as you can do pretty sophisticated simulations. [00:48:00] imagine almost like role playing a situation to, learn, how well students, collaborate or how they lead. but let me go on the Socratic bot one.
I, was in management consulting in the nineties and the interview process for management consult and some banks and some other orgs are case studies, right? So the interviewer. Gives uh, , scenario about a company or whatever. and, it's not necessarily right answer.
It's that they're evaluating how the interviewee, reasons and ask questions and problem solves. and now I know that if I had more content specific knowledge or sector domain knowledge, it would probably have done better, but I did fine. but, is that something, if we're imagining, hey, could we create a version of that, using ai, do you think that's within the realm of reasonableness?
Dan Willingham: I don't really know enough about AI or assessment to give an answer that's really worth listening to, for that question. So the, first thing I think of is adaptive testing, which was Yeah. I know just a little bit about, and I know it was. Uh, [00:49:00] sounded like it really oughta work.
and so for those who don't know, adaptive testing very broadly conceived, is the idea that based on my success, for the first few questions, you can then give more difficult, if I'm getting 'em all right, give more difficult questions, if I'm getting 'em all wrong, give easier questions, that turned out to be trickier than anybody thought it was gonna be.
based on the, sort of knit wits version that I just gave, I, have a little bit of the same sense here. It's my sense is that sounds like something, and yeah, a large language model ought to be really good at, so it sounds perfectly plausible, but there are probably angles on it, like a spider web that I don't understand.
Jeremy Singer: yeah, No, fair, enough. And I wonder like there's a broader thing connected to this, which is, there's been movements in education for 30 years around, personalizing the instruction and Yeah. And even applying a lot of,spaced repetition and some of the things we've already talked about.
again, even if you conceptually get it, it's still hard, as you said, to implement. yeah. but [00:50:00] ai, that part, I'm optimistic that AI can really help. 'cause it can do, I, think of something like word clouds we would do town halls or we do town halls, a college board, and we have 2000 employees who all, there's a free response area.
I used to get, we would see the word cloud of which words were, and then I'd look at it and say, oh, they said a lot about, mission or, growth or whatever. I'd, try to. Perceive or take what I could from it. And now we can load every comment instead of someone reading 2000 open-ended comments and trying to analyze it, we signal out an LLM and in two seconds we have at least a summary.
And it may, we gotta be careful about the veracity, but at least, so that kind of power is, so different. So it makes me bullish on, helping teachers and helping learners. Are you bullish too, I guess is the question?
Dan Willingham: It, it depends. Yeah, it the, task that we're talking about.
in terms of personalizing learning, as you said, this is something that has been on the horizon, since the [00:51:00] seventies people have been talking about this. Yeah. and it's just proven much more difficult than anybody thought it could be that AI is gonna be the breakthrough. as far as I can tell, the biggest limiting factor has been.
As you try and personalize, you get this ever increasing. the, more personalizing you're doing, you get this ever increasing tree of branches that you might wanna go down for individual students, which requires high quality content at the end of each one of those branches. And the, limiting factor has been the high quality content.
Can the LLMs solve that problem? I don't really know. It sounds plausible, that they'll reach that point. but yeah, I'm agnostic at this point.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah.
Dan Willingham: And happily, I don't work in an industry where I have to gamble about it.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. I think for listeners, this is you being bullish, I'll, make that argument.
so let me go another way of how AI's impacting, and I've heard you, speak and write about I, think everyone would agree [00:52:00] that,what teachers are asked to do is way too much. And it goes back to your earlier point of there's so many things out of the control that you can't, that are different from research.
what, a teacher is confronted with. And, it's an next impossible job. And then for listeners who are, we talk about AI all the time. Everybody's been talking about ai. it's really hard to imagine, but I, would argue that we are at the sort of beginning of the AI impact on, teaching and learning.
We're not even close to where it will evolve. And so that's a bit scary. for all the reasons we talked about and, potentially, disrupting,how students learn or what students need to learn. But a bright spot already is, we see teachers using the tools for lesson planning, for grading, for certain things, for tasks that frankly, not all of 'em love to do.
And they were time consuming. on my last episode, I interviewed Jenny Magiera from Google, and they had some research in Northern Ireland where they found that, basically,teachers that were using [00:53:00] LLMs saved 10 hours a week, inefficiency on some of those tasks that I mentioned among others.
two part question to you. One is. Does it make, you more optimistic about the job of a teacher being more manageable because you can use this wonderful tool, at least for those aims, not the challenges we talked about. And if a teacher has newfound time, let's assume some of it is they can spend time, they work fewer hours, which they deserve and hopefully improves teacher retention, all that, which is great.
But beyond that, where would you want them to reorient their time, from where you sit?
Dan Willingham: Oh gosh. so regarding the first question, yeah, I'm absolutely optimistic that, Wise use of LLMs can be very helpful to teachers in exactly the way you describe, and I've tried to do some of that in my own teaching and have, asked LLMs for, ideas on, lesson plans, in college level seminars that I teach.
And for,undergraduate classes, you can [00:54:00] say,here's a textbook chapter, gimme 50 multiple choice questions. it's just tireless, What I found is about 90% of them are terrible. and this is of course, very relevant. The reason I, so quickly spot them as terrible is because I've got 35 years now of experience writing these things.
So you do want there to be a lot of knowledge in the head of the teacher who's using these things to evaluate the output. But yeah, I, think absolutely it can be really helpful. in terms of, if they're saving time, what, else should they be doing?
yeah, I think that's very individual based on their assessment of, what they'd like to be working on and what they think needs, burnishing in their own practice, based on their own judgment and based on, one hopes, advice from colleagues at their school.
Jeremy Singer: And, I don't mean to push you outside, I know I'm asking you to, predict a bit here, but I do wanna go back to something we both agree on.
I think most people, so there's a ton of very smart people who [00:55:00] overall have been quite critical about. Digital literacy EdTech over the last 30 years, like a lot more promise was made in the actual impact. and, even to the extent that the net impact may have been even negative. we don't have to debate if we fully agree or partially agree or whatever, but as schools and districts, so people listening, they are, to your point, you can't opt out of ai.
This is not like smart boards. Yeah. So they're gonna have to do something with AI and implement it. do you have any sense at this level of and, knowing we don't know a lot, but like how do you maximize the benefit of how you use it if you're a superintendent or instructional leader, and how would you minimize the harm, at least where we are today?
Dan Willingham: Yeah. I noticed that you used the word implement it and I would've said they have to respond to it. And fair implementing is one response. another possible response to say we're gonna have nothing to do with it. and I've, talked with school leaders who, that's their chosen response.
And frequently that [00:56:00] kind of fits some of the vibe and values of, the school more broadly. And then I've talked with other school leaders who say yeah, we're all in. I'm like, it's crazy. their philosophy is kids can access it and, why pretend they can't.
And it's, crazy not to. I think the, useful way to think about it is, one watch word to always keep in mind is, the, level of description of what AI does, AI helps with individual tasks, right? A lot of times people talk about it replacing jobs, it replaces jobs if there's kind of one task that is associated with that job, for most people in a job, it's going to be applicable to some tasks and not other tasks.
And so I think. that's a useful way of, conceptualizing it in education as well. What are the possible tasks to which students might put ai and then what are the cognitive consequences of them using it for [00:57:00] that task? And does that seem like a good idea or a bad idea to us? and naturally the way I conceptualize it is very embedded in, a view of the cognitive system.
But, if pressed I would defend that, that view.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, no, it's good. And I, think the distinction between tasks first jobs is, a really good one. I am nervous. Just, there's a lot to figure out, but I do worry that you're right. is AI gonna most jobs, I don't think it will fully replace, but if it replace enough tasks of a job and there's 10 people doing that job, do you still need 10 people? So that's my, anxiety.
so you've published many excellent books. We, primarily, talked about one. and I'd love to talk about 'em all, but I'd be remiss if I did not, mention the reading mind.
you lay out in that book The Science of Reading,we've been seeing some disturbing statistics as far as reading scores that continue to deteriorate, per conversation earlier. We could blame social media [00:58:00] potentially, which clearly is part of the cause We could blame COVID, but there's a lot of other things.
we, hear every day from our members, college professors, high school teachers, et cetera, that, students either can't or won't read anymore. And I saw, and there's a million statistics, one is that nearly half, of, US citizens last year didn't read a single book in 2025.
yeah,
Jeremy Singer: I wanna talk about one is.
how concerning are you with the declining data and reading? how would you explain it? and, what do you think the causes are and what should we be doing as a society? 'cause it, it is really depressing.
Dan Willingham: So I have a, bit of a unusual take on this.
I don't think that the decline that we're seeing in reading scores among students, nor the reports that we're seeing from high school and college professors about, students' reluctance to complete assigned reading has anything to do with the decline in leisure reading.
leisure reading, I think has been overestimated for the last 20 years [00:59:00] because most of the surveys are self-report surveys and they're retrospective. So you ask students, how many books do you read a week? and. , there are two problems with that. One is that assumes that I actually know the answer, And second, that I'm willing to say what it is. the better data come from the American Time Use Survey, that's conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the reason those data are superior is because it's a diary study where you're just,
Jeremy Singer: by the way, I love in this moment, you're referring to government statistics as reliable curve, but I'm proud of you for that.
Dan Willingham: So, far as I know, these data, reliable. it's a diary study, and so you're not asked particularly about reading. You're asked, what did you do today? and so you're not gonna be embarrassed to say you haven't been asked directly about reading. So if anybody might not read, right?
So those data indicate that reading has declined in the last 20 years, but not among student ages. And [01:00:00] to be fair, the youngest age is age 15, the youngest age bracket in this dataset, 15 to 19. but what is a decline among retirees as the old people who are reading less. The young people have never read very much as long as we've had these data.
so I, think there's something else behind the problems that we're seeing, in students' willingness to read and their success in completing difficult reading. I think it's more to do with what's expected of them in school than in leisure reading.
Jeremy Singer: Got , So that's fair. But we've also seen reading scores, declining in general. Yeah. So if you think about that narrow piece, or I guess the broad piece, but what do you think is happening? why are reading scores falling?
Dan Willingham: Yeah. So one of the things you gotta remember about test scores is as you well know, they pick up all learning, as well as motivation, not just what's happening in school. My sense is that less is being expected of [01:01:00] students across the board and that the texts that are being put in front of students are shorter.
There are fewer of them, and they're less demanding. And so it is a matter of students having had less practice working with a challenging text and both acquiring knowledge that's going to help them cope with that text as well as learning. What do you do when you are muddling through a text and are having a lot of trouble?
like there are ways you can be more or less resourceful in, coping with a difficult text. And I think fewer students are learning those skills.
Jeremy Singer: So if I'm a superintendent or instructional leader, part of, then the answer would be, Hey, don't shortcut, give good text, have students have to work through harder things don't make it too easy.
Dan Willingham: And, knowledge rich curricula are having a moment right now after Don Hirsch has, come up several times. He's gonna come up again. Don's been arguing this [01:02:00] for. 40 years. I've been arguing for it for 20, Don's been arguing for it for 40.
Jeremy Singer: The
Dan Willingham: og he's the og, knowledge guy for sure.
just look at the websites of all of the curricula that are nationally competitive. They all say something about knowledge. Now they're not all equivalent in terms of how effectively they build knowledge, and especially how carefully they're sequenced.
It's not just about being knowledge rich. The knowledge really needs to be sensibly sequenced so that, just as in math, you learn, concepts build on one another. The same thing is true of other knowledge. So I would say to superintendents, yeah, look closely at your curriculum and, just as we were saying before, you've gotta find someone who, if, you don't feel like you can evaluate yourself, you gotta find someone who you trust who can give you good advice.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, So intentionality of The depth of the book, the sequencing, all those are critical. ,
Dan Willingham: Let me interrupt for just one second please. To add one thing, because a very general point, I'm [01:03:00] amazed at the extent to which there's not more discussion about curriculum in American education.
We love to talk about pedagogy, we love to talk about teacher moves in the classroom and so on. It really all starts with what is the content that teachers are setting out to teach the students. and I, think that deserves more care and attention than it usually gets.
Jeremy Singer: 100%. You're speaking to the choir here.
I I feel what is covered in K 12 and even college has not evolved at the pace of what we know people should learn what's changed. and I actually. I am more hopeful. Like it's so hard to change anything in the core, of what is taught. there's just so much inertia, but I am very excited or not excited, but I believe AI is gonna force us.
We even, we don't want to reevaluate what's being taught. And I think some stuff is gonna be reflective of what you need to [01:04:00] know in an AI world, but some is gonna be stuff we should have already changed curriculum or what's covered. They're gonna say, Hey, things like, financial fluency and, other skills that weren't being taught or covered suddenly become important.
I love that point. So I'm gonna ask you four very rapid fire questions. I ask all my guests. and we'll go quickly, and then we'll close out. So what's one educational buzz word you wish we could retire?
Dan Willingham: learning styles.
Jeremy Singer: Okay. me too. And we don't even have to say anything more. what's your favorite book about education or one that deeply shared your thinking?
Dan Willingham: yeah.
Cultural literacy would, certainly be, a top contender.
Jeremy Singer: It's a big, day for him. name one thing that you're bullish on, regarding the future for learners.
Dan Willingham: I am bullish on the general resiliency of teachers, and I'm a little reluctant to say that because it makes, it sounds like, yeah. they've been pummeled, but they just keep getting back up. But I mean it,I don't [01:05:00] want teachers to be pummeled, but as I travel around and, talk to teachers and visit classrooms, I'm just always, so impressed and amazed by how, not just dedicated they are, but how skilled they are at, doing this job.
So , that's probably what I'm most bullish on.
Jeremy Singer: yeah, and very inspiring when you get in the classroom and you see a great teacher. And last question what's one class you wish all students had to take? K 12 College.
Dan Willingham: probability.
Jeremy Singer: Yep. Great.
Dan Willingham: Yeah, A semester long course in probability.
Jeremy Singer: Love it.
love it. Alright, last question. if we got back together 10 years from now,what would, have to change in research in schools or how the two interact for you to feel more optimistic that the research side is actually shaping classroom practice,
Dan Willingham: teacher education would have to change.
that's the, aspect of the educational, world that has [01:06:00] really been untouched by research. The only thing we've seen is, some people trying to examine whether or not,having a degree, for example, or a particular type of training, affects student outcomes. And as what we mostly find is you have to squint to see it, there's not the, impact that we would expect.
And that's wild to contemplate. and so as a researcher, I'm always thinking low hanging fruit and this is in terms of implementation, it's a nightmare. But in terms of research, like trying to put principles in practice in teacher education, that would help teachers,teach more effectively.
it's not that hard because right now, damn near nothing's being done.
Jeremy Singer: I love it. I'm gonna pick up that mantle and I'm gonna follow up with you 'cause I think it's something we should, we, should work on. And it's a great aim. So Dan, thank you so much. as I said, you're my Mount Rushmore of people that have influenced how I think about [01:07:00] education.
You're so softspoken, but you really have had an outsize impact and. I'm particularly impressed. I'm a, big basketball Knicks fan and,in the early seventies, Willis Reed was one of the leaders and was injured and came out after an injury to, lead them to I think, their last championship, which was very sad.
'cause this was when I was four, so I don't remember. But you've had multiple dealing with multiple health issues. short-term Stuff. And you, gutted out this, podcast, would've been easier to reschedule.
So I really appreciate it and you brought such great energy. So thank you so much for being on the education equation.
Dan Willingham: it's been a real pleasure and,the conversation made it easy to forget any short term health concerns. It was great.
Jeremy Singer: Thanks for tuning in today. Join the conversation by following the education equation wherever you listen to podcasts.