Anyway, in this post I will attempt to summarise that formal writing into something more digestible.

One thing to note: although the intention was to look at STEM subjects, the research papers found only covered Maths and Science.

“I was never any good at Maths.”

How many times have you heard a parent say that, completely unbothered? Contrast that with how rarely you’d hear someone admit they struggle to read. There’s something socially acceptable - sometimes even a little inexplicably desirable - about brushing off non-achievement in STEM subjects. And it turns out, that casualness has consequences.

I completed a systematic review of 15 empirical studies exploring how peer and social influences shape high school students’ motivation and engagement in STEM subjects. The findings were striking, and important for anyone who works with, or raises, teenagers.

The Big Picture

STEM disengagement is rarely a purely individual problem. Across more than 170,000 secondary school students studied in countries from South Korea to Nigeria to England, the evidence is clear: what students believe about STEM subjects, and about their own ability in them, is shaped enormously by the people around them. Parents, peers and cultural context all play a role, and they interact with each other in ways that can either support or erode motivation over time.

Here’s what the research found across four key themes.

1. Parents Matter More Than You Might Think

One of the most striking findings comes from a study spanning 18 countries (Nalipay et al., 2021): parents’ beliefs about the usefulness of science predicted their children’s beliefs, which in turn predicted academic achievement. Remarkably, parental attitudes were a stronger predictor of achievement than the students’ own motivation.

In other words, if a parent believes science isn’t really useful, their child is more likely to internalise that belief, regardless of how the teacher is doing in the classroom.

But there’s a nuance here. Generic parental pressure — high expectations without specific support — tends to backfire, especially as students get older. One study (Shin et al., 2016) found that vague academic ambitions became demotivating over time, as students recognised the gap between their parents’ expectations and their own performance. What actually helped? Specific, personalised conversations about future careers and how STEM connects to them.

And when parent-child relationships become strained, Bong (2008) found that conflict with parents directly correlated with students concealing academic struggles and even academic dishonesty in maths i.e. students would rather cheat than admit to a parent they were struggling.

2. Peer Influence: Disengagement Is Contagious

This was a strong, but not unsurprising, finding. Social disengagement spreads between students, even without conscious intention.

Mendoza and King (2020) showed that a peer group’s level of engagement at one point in time significantly predicted individual students’ engagement seven months later, even after controlling for demographics and goal orientation. The mechanism was a mix of unconscious mimicry and conscious alignment with the group to fit in.

And the researchers note something sobering: disengagement may be more contagious than engagement, because of the negativity bias hardwired into the human brain.

Yao et al. (2023) added another layer: peer-perceived goal orientation was the strongest predictor of students’ own goals - stronger than teacher or parent influence. If your peer group is oriented toward avoiding failure rather than mastering the subject, that norm tends to take hold, and it’s self-reinforcing.

3. Gender and Culture Shape the Lens

Social influences don’t operate in a vacuum, they’re filtered through gender and cultural norms that can amplify or redirect their effects.

Girls consistently reported lower intrinsic and utility value for mathematics than boys across multiple studies. Leaper et al. (2012) found something particularly interesting: it wasn’t whether a girl felt content in her gender role that mattered — it was whether she felt pressured to conform to gendered expectations about which subjects were “for her.” Peer support for STEM was as influential as maternal support for girls’ maths and science motivation. Interestingly, peer groups in this study tended to support English or STEM, but not both.

On culture: students from collectivist societies (Philippines, Korea, China) often felt the stakes of STEM engagement more intensely, tied to family obligation and social belonging. This could be motivating, but it could also lead to concealing struggles to avoid shame. Meanwhile, cross-national research (Oon et al., 2024) found that students in Hong Kong and Singapore held significantly more negative views about physics career prospects than students in England, which in turn shaped their engagement with the subject.

There Are Things We Can Do About This

The research points to levers that educators, schools and parents can pull.

For teachers: the classroom is where peer norms are created. If teachers don’t deliberately cultivate positive norms, students will create their own, and those are less likely to be productive ones. Creating a classroom culture where mastery (rather than performance) is the goal, where help-seeking is normalised and where genuine effort is made visible and valued can interrupt the cycle of disengagement before it becomes self-reinforcing. Self-efficacy (students’ belief in their own ability) acts as a buffer against negative peer influence.

For parents: quality matters more than pressure. Specific, supportive conversations about how STEM connects to future possibilities, rather than vague academic ambition, are what actually predict growth in students’ sense of the subject’s value. Schools can support this by educating parents about what helpful involvement looks like.

For schools: the research suggests interventions work best when they work together. Functional communities, high social capital, supportive parents, school-oriented peer groupsm - these factors compound. Improving one can positively influence the others.

Understanding the social mechanisms behind STEM disengagement opens up real possibilities for change in classrooms, in homes, and in the cultural stories we tell about who science and maths are for.

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This post is based on a systematic review of 15 empirical studies published between 2003 and 2024, covering over 170,000 secondary school students across multiple countries. Full references available on request.

References

Ardura, D., Zamora, Á., & Pérez-Bitrián, A. (2021). The role of motivation on secondary school students’ causal attributions to choose or abandon chemistry. Chemistry Education: Research & Practice, 22(1), 43–61. https://doi.org/10.1039/d0rp00168f

Bong, M. (2008). Effects of Parent-Child Relationships and Classroom Goal Structures on Motivation, Help-Seeking Avoidance, and Cheating. Journal of Experimental Education, 76(2), 191–217. https://doi.org/10.3200/JEXE.76.2.191-217

Cambria, J., Brandt, H., Nagengast, B., & Trautwein, U. (2017). Frame of Reference effects on values in mathematics: evidence from German secondary school students. ZDM - Mathematics Education, 49(3), 435–447. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-017-0841-0

Dorfman, B., & Fortus, D. (2019). Students’ self‐efficacy for science in different school systems. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 56(8), 1037–1059. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21542

Hofman, R. H., Hofman, W. H. A., & Guldemond, H. (2003). Effective Families, Peers, and Schools--A Configuration Approach . Educational Research & Evaluation, 9(3), 213. https://doi.org/10.1076/edre.9.3.213.15574

King, R., & Ganotice, F. (2014). The Social Underpinnings of Motivation and Achievement: Investigating the Role of Parents, Teachers, and Peers on Academic Outcomes. Asia-Pacific Education Researcher (Springer Science & Business Media B.V.), 23(3), 745–756. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-013-0148-z

King, R., McInerney, D. M., & Watkins, D. A. (2012). Studying for the sake of others: the role of social goals on academic engagement. Educational Psychology, 32(6), 749–776. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2012.730479

Leaper, C., Farkas, T., & Brown, C. S. (2012). Adolescent girls’ experiences and gender-related beliefs in relation to their motivation in math/science and english. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 41(3), 268–282. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-011-9693-z

Mendoza, N. B., & King, R. B. (2020). The social contagion of student engagement in school. School Psychology International, 41(5), 454–474. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143034320946803

Nalipay, M. J. N., Cai, Y., & King, R. B. (2021). The social contagion of utility value: How parents’ beliefs about the usefulness of science predict their children’s motivation and achievement. School Psychology International, 42(3), 221–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143034320985200

Oon, P.-T., Subramaniam, R., Wong, A., & Abrahams, I. (2024). School students’ views about Physics: A cross-national study involving England, Hong Kong and Singapore. Research in Science & Technological Education, 42(3), 784–811. https://doi.org/10.1080/02635143.2022.2136649

Oyedeji, S. (2017). The Effects of Students’ Motivational Factors on their Attitudes toward Mathematics. International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education. 6. 277. DOI: 10.11591/ijere.v6i4.10770

Shin, J., Seo, E., & Hwang, H. (2016). The effects of social supports on changes in students’ perceived instrumentality of schoolwork for future goal attainment. Educational Psychology, 36(5), 1024–1043. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2015.1072135

Yao, J.-X., Xiang, Y.-X., Luo, T., Deng, C.-F., Guo, Y.-Y., & Fortus, D. (2023). Disciplinary learning motivation and its external influencing factors: Taking physics in a “selection crisis” as an example. Research in Science Education, 53(4), 823–839. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-023-10112-x

Zhang, Y., Yang, X., Sun, X., & Kaiser, G. (2023). The reciprocal relationship among Chinese senior secondary students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and cognitive engagement in learning mathematics: a three-wave longitudinal study. ZDM - Mathematics Education, 55(2), 399–412. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-022-01465-0

The background of the piece is set against the New Zealand system with a current focus on excellence and equity, with the authors arguing that academic achievement is prioritised as the measure of success in schools, in particular the rates at which students are achieving NCEA Level 2. Doesn’t seem so terrible on the surface right? Why not measure schools’ success by their academic achievement?

Berryman and Eley argue that making academic achievement the primary driver disadvantages minority groups, with the focus of their writing on Māori students in particular. They argue that a sense of belonging for these students is a vital prerequisite to learning and should be something that schools look to measure and achieve.

Some alarming statistics are quoted:

• NZ ranked 2nd highest for bullying exposure (PISA 2015)

• 45% of Year 9 students experience monthly bullying (TIMSS)

• 22% of students feel like outsiders at school (PISA 2015, increased from 8% in 2003)

• Highest youth suicide rate among 41 OECD countries (15.6 per 100,000)

And, Māori students are disproportionately overrepresented in those statistics. The bullying is identified as a form of lateral violence - “when people who feel oppressed take their frustrations out on each other because they feel powerless to confront the system.”

Another study (Murphy & Zirkel, 2015) is referenced in which there is discussion of the tendency to “associate the institution of education … as a White enterprise”. Or in other words, that we are setting up our ākonga Māori in a system that inherently feels like it’s not theirs; that it belongs to others and they are the outsiders within it.

And so, the importance of belonging becomes apparent. NZ European students bring their own issues around needing to belong when they come to school, but their worries will be about friendship groups, finding their strengths, liking teachers etc. Our Māori students have an added layer of “is school for someone like me” before they even get to that.

Berryman and Eley claim a subtle, but important difference between belonging and inclusion: “Using the term ‘belonging’ for the internalized concept and response to schooling by the student and the term ‘inclusion’ to describe the policies, actions and decisions taken by those (usually the adults) within schools in an effort to bring all young people into the learning experiences.”

It’s important for us to get to the internalised feelings of belonging, beyond simple inclusion policies. The need to belong is one of the basic requirements for human motivation - referred to as relatedness in self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Berryman and Eley posit that belonging (rather than inclusion) has a direct impact on motivation, academic output and psychological well-being. That without belonging, you’re already off to the wrong start. The student voice they gathered supports those claims.

“The students in 2015 described a simultaneous success trajectory; that when their cultural identity was strong and secure and they were learning and achieving for the future then equity, excellence and belonging was possible. For these students, success enabled them to walk confidently and with mana (ascribed power and authority), in the two worlds of Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori and non-Māori.”

Interestingly, the sorts of things the students talked about aren’t that hard - learning to pronounce names correctly, for example. I think sometimes teachers underestimate the power of the “easy wins”, because they feel too easy!

Here are what I think are the implications for teaching and learning:

Build belonging through relationships

• Know your students as individuals - names, cultures, interests, strengths. Learn correct pronunciation.

• High expectations with high support - believe in every student’s potential

• Culturally responsive pedagogy - incorporate students’ cultural knowledge and create opportunities for them to share it.

• Address bias explicitly - examine your own assumptions and practices

Review the definition of success

• Beyond equity and excellence to include belonging, being, becoming. Measure and track both.

• Understand belonging is a necessary prerequisite for learning, not an optional extra on the side.

And the questions/statements I’m hoping will spark some discussion in my seminar:

• What is the difference between feeling included and truly belonging in schools?

  • What examples are there of achieving “inclusion” but not “belonging”?

  • What’s the difference between welcoming diversity and genuinely celebrating it?

• Excellence without belonging can have severe and ongoing consequences for ākonga Māori.

  • How might our current assessment-focused system inadvertently marginalise certain pupils?

  • What evidence have you seen of students feeling like outsiders?

  • How do we balance academic rigour with nurturing belonging?

• Educational institutions are “associated as white enterprises”

  • How might students feel school isn’t for “someone like me”?

  • What rules, codes or practices in our schools might perpetuate this feeling for minority groups?

  • What can be done at a leadership level to combat this and promote belonging

  • At a classroom level?

Perhaps you’d like to share some thoughts?

Image source: https://newsroom.co.nz/2019/06/30/maori-knowledge-liberating-for-maori-students/

The review pulls together 46 studies, including 13 longitudinal ones, to map the many ways TSRs influence students’ connection to school.

Across the board, better relationships with teachers were linked to stronger engagement - not just in the moment, but over time. Students with positive TSRs had higher grades, better attendance, fewer disruptive behaviours, and were less likely to be suspended or drop out. Not exactly surpising information, and it was also good to see that the authors noted the bidirectional nature of these correlations - when students are displaying those behaviours, that contributes to better TSRs.

What was also interesting was that these correlations held up even after controlling for family background, school context, and individual characteristics. In other words, TSRs aren’t just a “nice extra”—they’re a meaningful lever for change, and a means for overcoming other negative impacts.

The review also highlights a shift in how we think about engagement. Historically, schools focused on disengagement as a problem to fix—truancy, disruption, failure. But modern research recognises a quieter group: students who attend, behave, and complete work but show “little indication of excitement, commitment, or pride.” These students aren’t acting out, but they’re not thriving either. TSRs matter for them too.

The theoretical backbone of the review draws on self‑determination theory, attachment theory, and stage–environment fit. All point to the same idea: adolescents need to feel connected. Teachers, who spend hours each day with students, become key figures in meeting that need. A supportive teacher can act as a “secure base,” buffering frustration and fuelling motivation.

One of the most practical insights is that TSRs are malleable. Unlike socioeconomic status or family circumstances, schools can actually influence the quality of relationships. That makes TSRs a powerful target for intervention—especially for students who are vulnerable or at risk of disengagement.

The review doesn’t pretend TSRs are the whole story. Engagement is complex and shaped by many forces. But the evidence is clear: relationships are a foundational piece of the puzzle. When teachers build trust, warmth, and respect, students don’t just behave better—they think better, feel better, and stay connected to learning.

We have a responsibility to remember that we, as the adult in the TSR, with a fully developed prefrontal cortex, carry the responsibility of making sure it’s a positive relationship that can have long-lasting impacts on the success of that student.

Image source: https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/memories-of-positive-and-negative-student-teacher-relationships which is also another good article in this area.

“Errors are an integral part of learning”. We all know it right? But we also know that students don’t like making them. They most naturally equate error with failure, and it’s important for teachers to set a climate that deals with errors positively. It reminds me also of the tendency for students to feel like they are doing their best work when it requires the least effort. They think if they are finding something easy to do, they are “doing well”, rather than seeing that getting it all right just means they’re not actually learning to do anything new; just repeating something they’ve already mastered. In my experience at least, it’s an unfortunate part of human nature in teens to think that when learning is taking effort and they’re finding it hard, that they think that means they’re not doing well. It takes explicit teaching for them to understand (to some degree!) the importance of desirable difficulties, effort, and the large amount of learning that can come from making mistakes.

The study defines a positive error climate as a learning environment that views errors as “natural occurrences and possible starting points for expanding knowledge.” It was found that this climate leads to better motivation, higher achievement and less alienation from teachers.

It’s important to recognise that making an error in the classroom is a social interaction and teachers are responsible for the climate that shapes the response to that event. Students’ perception of how the error climate is controlled is also one part of their shared perception of teaching quality, something we know from other studies has a significant impact on student achievement.

The study found that a negative error climate (as perceived by the students) correlated with increased teacher alienation. Further to this, it had a longer lasting impact, correlating with increased teacher alienation in the following year too. Teacher alienation is an indicator of school alienation that leads to poorer outcomes for students.

“A positive error climate is associated with favourable outcomes such as more adaptive individual dealing with errors, more positive motivational tendencies, use of self-regulated learning strategies, learning behaviour and achievement.”

When teachers can create an environment that supports students through their error making (which really must happen for the best learning), they strengthen the teacher-student relationships, provide a psychologically safe environment for students and improve the students’ feelings towards them and school in general.

I think that sometimes teachers may shy away from highlighting/correcting errors in front of the class, for fear of this negative association and alienation. In my opinion, this is wholly counterproductive and perpetuates the idea that errors are something to be embarrassed about and dealt with quietly. Great teaching includes publicly, but positively dealing with the error - thanking a student for their contribution, praising the effort they made, even welcoming the error so that you can show everyone what to do with it. One of my favourite responses to students is to say “I’m so glad you made that mistake, I was hoping somebody would so that we could talk about it.”

What are some of the things you do to promote a positive error climate?

Here’s a brief summary of a few of the points I got from it and what it led me to think about. Perhaps if you’re interested in finding out more, you could check out the whole book.

This chapter is an introduction to the history of Social Psychology (and this is my even briefer summary!), beginning with Plato and Aristotle. Plato was fairly pessimistic, arguing that people need structure and social organisation to counter natural instincts, whereas Aristotle was a little more optimistic, thinking that people came together to form a good society through instinctual tendencies toward sociability.

Modern Social Psychology came about towards the end of the 1800s as the scientific method was applied to sociology i.e. people started designing experiments to test theories in the field.

Some early observations were the impact of competition, or other people observing, on performance. This was identified by Norman Triplett who, as a keen cyclist, noticed cyclists did better when in competition with other cyclists than when going against the clock alone. It was also noticed that sometimes observation/competition improved performance and sometimes it worsened it. My side-thought about teaching: I’ve definitely seen this. Competition handled well in the classroom can boost performance, but handled poorly can have a really negative impact.

Next, there are some thoughts about how people respond in a group vs as individuals. There is a strong desire for group norms, and when norms don’t exist, the group will attempt to create them. Once established, individuals are driven by a desire to meet those norms, even to the point of reversing their original opinions. My thoughts related to teaching: I think this is one of the strongest things highly effective teachers do - control the norms of the classroom and bring attention to the routines, habits, and positive behaviours that they want as the norm in their class.

During WWII there was a tendency towards research in fields that were urgent at that time e.g. what motivates troops and what leadership styles were effective. A particular study put 11-year-old boys into 3 groups with a leader that displayed either a democratic, autocratic, or laissez-faire leadership style. “The democratic style produced constructive and independent group norms, marked by focused and energetic work whether the leader was present or absent. Boys in the groups with laissez-faire leadership were generally passive, while groups with autocratic leaders were either aggressive or apathetic.” Enough said about what that can mean for teachers.

In the 50s and 60s, there were some studies that were, under today’s standards, ethically ambiguous… putting participants in distressing situations where they thought they were inflicting pain on others. It gave some fascinating insights into how far we will go to conform, and the impact of proximity to the instructor/source of authority and proximity to the person upon whom the pain was inflicted. For teachers, it’s another nod to the drive to conform, and if we can manage that well it can be used for good. (Side note: these sorts of experiments also led to the development of strict ethical procedures for conducting such research. We probably couldn’t replicate them today.)

More recently, there have been some discoveries about favouritism amongst people in the same group. We are more likely to assign positive attributes and rewards to those in our in-group. We also will avoid awarding rewards to those not in our group, to the point of reducing our own reward if it disproportionately benefits the “other” group. An interesting one to keep an eye on as a teacher - in the classroom we need to create a shared culture that belongs to the whole class and actively avoid there being in/out distinctions.

There was quite a lot more to this chapter, but those are some of my key takeaways that give a bit of a flavour of how the book started. I’m looking forward to studying this topic further.

This summary is based on Chapter 1 of Hogg & Cooper (2007)

This review article focuses on 8 strategies for learners, rather than instructional methods, to promote learning.

First, the meaning of generative learning: my understanding of this term is that new information needs to be integrated into existing knowledge, or schemas, for a learner to make sense of it and be able to apply it to new situations. It’s an obvious one really - start with what they know and build from there.

And here’s a summary of the strategies:

1. Learning by Summarising

   Students benefit by summarising information in their own words. It should not be verbatim notes. The learner needs to organise the new information into a short summary that they fully understand.

   Interestingly, the results of testing students with this method showed an increased effect for students with prior low ability.

   Limitations: it works best for text-based information (e.g. English and humanities subjects), and is less effective for highly spatial material (e.g. Chemistry and Physics). Students also need explicit teaching on how to summarise well.

2. Learning by Mapping

   This is taking information and converting it into a spatial arrangement with concepts and links between them. A study showed this to be more effective, based on a test taken 5 days later, than making summary notes. Again, strongest effects were seen in students who had lower average grades previously.

   Limitations: students need explicit teaching on how to create these maps effectively. It can be tedious and time-consuming, so teachers could provide partial maps for students to complete.

3. Learning by Drawing

   Learners select the important information and create a drawing to represent it.

   Limitations: it can produce extraneous load for those who struggle to draw. Keeping the drawing simple, or providing parts of it, e.g. the background scene, can help.

4. Learning by Imagining

   Learners create mental images of the content. Similar to learning by drawing, it encourages learners to select the important information and link it to an image, to help connect it to an existing knowledge schema. But, it removes the limitations around needing to actually create the drawing. Learners that were trained to create a mental image based on text, performed better on a subsequent transfer test. It was most effective for students with high prior knowledge.

   Limitations: learners need guidance on creating useful mental images and specific prompts to guide learners during the process. It’s not as effective for novice learners with limited prior knowledge. It requires more commitment from the learner because as a teacher you can’t see it! You need to trust that they actually are creating a picture in their head and not daydreaming about lunch…

5. Learning by Self-Testing

   Also known as the testing effect or retrieval-based learning. Learners test themselves on previously learned material. Taking practice tests leads to more persistent learning outcomes than just restudying the material.

   Limitations: it is most effective when accompanied by corrective feedback and done repeatedly. Researchers agree with works for simple concepts, but disagree about its effectiveness for complex learning materials. It is most effective when the retrieval activity closely matches the method of final testing.

6. Learning by Self-Explaining

   Similar to summarising, learners create an oral summary - they talk to themselves, or think aloud about what they are learning. Students who were prompted to do this, performed better on subsequent tests.

   Limitations: best used for complex conceptual material e.g. Maths and Science. It’s good for multi-step solutions and worked examples. Students generally don’t self-explain spontaneously and need prompting and guidance.

7. Learning by Teaching

   Similar to self-explaining, attempting to teach others requires the learner to select the important information and organise it into a coherent explanation. One study showed that students who were told they would need to teach a concept performed better than students who were told they would be tested on it. And, those who did actually teach it performed best.

   Limitations: few studies have isolated this effect. Learners must process the information - simply restating the material is ineffective.

8. Learning by Enacting

   This involves some sort of physical movement connected to the learning e.g. manipulating objects or performing gestures. It helps learners select the important information and connect it to things they know around them. A study showed that students instructed to gesture during maths learning performed better.

   Limitations: possibly effective for learners with higher prior knowledge. The cognitive load of enacting may be a hindrance to less skilled learners. Learners need explicit instruction on how to map gestures to concepts.

All of the above strategies yielded an effect size of d=0.4 or higher (the benchmark for being considered educationally relevant). The highest was mapping, specifically using a matrix organiser, then it was teaching, followed by imagining and self-explaining. However, it’s important to note that different strategies work best in different scenarios.

Have you got a favourite go-to one? I think mine is self-testing. Retrieval practice is probably one of the easiest things to put in place, can be done independently by learners and has strong evidence of having a positive impact on long-term learning.

This one took my interest as I’ve seen it first hand in my own classroom - the impact of Generative AI (GenAI) on my students. Sometimes for good and sometimes not. And as you’d expect, the difference comes down to teachers first understanding what it is and what it isn’t, and then giving clear direction to students about when it can help them, when it won’t, and crucially when it feels like it’s helping them but it’s hindering their own internalising of learning.

“GenAI can support learning when guided by clear teaching principles. However, if designed or used without pedagogical guidance, outsourcing tasks to GenAI simply enhances performance with no real learning gains.”

This reminded me of a recent seminar with our teacher trainees - understanding the difference between learning and performance. Performance is a short-term thing - they can perform well immediately and under certain circumstances, but it’s not necessary showing learning. Learning means there has been enduring long-term change that isn’t easily forgotten.

What I saw in my classroom that ties this in with the use of AI was how easy it is for students reach for their favourite GenAI to show them how to work through something they couldn’t do. Like turning straight to the back of the book for the answers, but the AI answers are on steroids, with a full explanation attached.

On the surface level it’s easy to think how much this can support teachers who are trying to work around a large class of students needing help - and it certainly can. And the GenAI is usually pretty good too, often saying the things and steps that I would have done.

The issue though is that it has removed a desirably difficulty - learning should feel effortful. That effort is the learning happening. Students need to sit and think on a problem for a bit. They need time to mull it over, come at it from different angles, return to their notes, compare and contrast with worked examples, talk it through with a peer etc etc. All the great things that support learning over performance. And all things that take a bit of time in a world where we, and our students, are used to instant solutions and quick dopamine hits.

A study in Turkey showed that students using GenAI demonstrated improved performance in class but reduced performance in exam results:

This mirrors my anecdotal experience too. During exam revision, when my senior students were working through practice questions at various rates, I would allow them to use online tools to help when I was busy with someone else. But, I had students who reached for the ChatGPT explanation too quickly and sometimes before they even attempted the question themselves. They’re the same ones I know don’t tend to perform well in tests (and they didn’t in the recent summative exam results). I tried my best to retrain their habits to do all the other steps of attempting those problems before reaching for the AI answer. Some understood, others just found it too difficult to resist the easy, and temporary, fix. And those ones I had to ban from using it in class. But I know they would have carried on that “revision” style at home!

“Other studies show that the use of general-purpose LLMs in a pedagogical manner can improve students’ learning outcomes.”

In a pedagogical manner. That’s always the key isn’t it! Don’t be wowed by the new shiny thing and what it can do without recognising it’s potential damage when it’s not integrated careful with the guidance of a teacher - someone with the experience to know how to put it to good use to improve learning outcomes.

“Using GenAI with pedagogical intent can improve learning and foster skills like critical thinking, creativity and collaboration” In another study in Indonesia, students were given guidance about how to use ChatGPT best on a task to prepare and implement argumentative speeches in English (as a foreign language).

Since we’re interested in learning as a long-term change, I wonder whether the above is, instead, in the one-off performance category, though, and would like to see if it impacts on achivement in similar tasks repeated over time.

So what’s my takeaway, as a lover of technology and GenAI? It’s got so much good in it when employed well, with good pedagogical intent, planning and management. Same as everything in teaching really! We just need to remember we are the professional, experienced adult in the room and give students guidance on how they use the tools at their fingertips rather than it being a free for all.

Low-scope errors: Easily detectable, local issues (e.g. spelling mistakes in a single word).

High-scope errors: Global or relational issues requiring broader text processing (e.g. coherence, appropriate vocabulary).

“Low-scope errors attracted more attention and influenced text assessments. High-scope errors had no effect on either fixation or assessment.”

Eye-tracking data showed that participants looked much longer at low-scope errors, whereas high-scope errors attracted no additional visual attention.

Highlighting patterns were the same - participants highlighted low-scope errors far more often, and high-scope errors were frequently missed.

It’s an interesting study, but perhaps unsurprising results from novice teachers. They were highly sensitive to low-scope errors that are generally quite easy to spot and mark. The types of errors that doesn’t take any (or very little) training to spot. Whilst inexperienced, they will struggle with the harder task of finding deeper issues with the submitted text and need specific training to look for it. Strengthening beginning teachers’ ability to detect and interpret high-scope errors is essential for improving writing instruction and feedback. Anyone involved in teacher training should not assume it is inherent in their trainees, or that they will just have to pick it up on their own over time.

And isn’t intrinsic motivation such a holy grail for teachers… What a dream to have a classroom full of attentive and engaged learners because they are all intrinsically motivated to be there, learn the material and achieve well.

An interesting point is made that humans, by nature, have evolved to be have a tendency towards learning and creativity - probably most easily identifiable to an observer when watching young children. (Also to any parent who has survived the pre-school phase of 100 “why” questions a day!)

The natural inquisitiveness doesn’t extend into every area we want children to learn though. Ryan and Deci looked into the conditions that might elicit and sustain the innate propensity for intrinsic motivation:

Competence - “feelings of competence during action can enhance intrinsic motivation”. It’s important teachers provide ample opportunity for students to experience success, and give them positive feedback on it.

Autonomy - “Feelings of competence will not enhance intrinsic motivation unless accompanied by a sense of autonomy”. It’s not good if their success only happens when we’re holding their hand; they need to feel that they can or have achieved it themselves. “Teachers who are autonomy supportive (in contrast to controlling) catalyze in their students greater intrinsic motivation, curiosity, and desire for challenge.”

Relatedness - “Intrinsic motivation <is> more likely to flourish in contexts characterised by a sense of security and relatedness.” A key tenet of good teaching is building relationships where classrooms feel psychologically safe and students feel secure and supported.

A note on rewards - “all expected tangible rewards made contingent on task performance do reliably undermine intrinsic motivation”. (Boo! If only, right? Would make things much easier!) We can’t create intrinsic motivation with external rewards or consequences. Don’t get me wrong here, because my personal opinion is that the extrinsic stuff is often necessary to motivate students; the point being made here is that it might get the job done, but it won’t be the thing that creates intrinsic motivation, and may actually diminish it.

Now an interesting perspective on extrinsic motivation that I hadn’t consciously considered before: that it exists on a continuum from being externally regulated (just one step up from not motivated at all) to being internally regulated (just one step down from intrinsic motivation). The latter took me a minute to think about, but the example helped: “students who do their homework because they personally grasp its value for their chosen career are extrinsically motivated, as are those who do the work only because they are adhering to their parents’ control. Both examples involve instrumentalities rather than enjoyment of the work itself, yet the former case of extrinsic motivation entails personal endorsement and a feeling of choice, whereas the latter involves compliance with an external regulation.”

And good news: students get better at moving towards internal regulation of extrinsic motivation as they get older. Meaning they start to understand the value of a behavioural goal and accept it as personally important.

More good news, going back to relationships, “relatedness, the need to feel belongingness and connectedness with others is centrally important for internalization.” Building strong positive relationships helps students move up that continuum of extrinsic motivation towards more internal regulation. They’ll do it for a teacher they feel positively connected to, because they will then take on that teacher’s values as their own. A reminder about autonomy though, as “a critical element for a regulation to be internalized.” Show them what’s important and why, how to do it, and then let them do it for themselves.

Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness.

Grounded in cognitive load theory, LRI is not a new learning theory but a practical synthesis of well-established principles. Its central idea is straightforward: when students are first learning something new, teaching should reduce unnecessary cognitive demands through explicit instruction, modelling, and guided practice. As understanding strengthens, instructional support is gradually withdrawn, allowing students to take on more cognitive responsibility and work independently.

But how can a teacher know how effective they are at Load Reduction Instruction? Martin and Evans came up with the Load Reduction Instruction Scale (LRIS) as a means to get feedback on this. It could easily be used as a way to get feedback from students directly, or to have an experienced teacher observe your class using this scale.

The scale is broken up into 5 sections, with 5 statements on each, which are then rated on a Likert scale. A simple and effective way to get a read on just how well you are managing these elements of reducing unnecessary cognitive load.

Read more here. The full LRIS can be found in the appendix of this article.

This article was an interesting read.

The premise is that we often assume that teachers having a sense of humour is a good thing in the classroom. It intuitively feels right: teachers can use humour to build relationships with students, relationships are key to a positive learning environment, therefore humour will improve learning in a classroom. However, these researchers found that evidence of this was based on correlation and they wanted to investigate causation.

What they found was the type of humour was key to whether or not it had a positive impact on their students’ intrinsic motivation and emotional experiences.

They compared 5 different types of humour used: course-related, course-unrelated, self-disparaging, aggressive, and no humour. They controlled for variables and changed only the type of humour employed (or not).

Key findings (terms in italics were the name of a quality that was rated by students and/or experienced teachers, referred to as experts)

Course-related humour is best

• Consistently improved teacher–student relationship and interestingness (rated by experts and students).

• Improved clarity of instruction (experts).

• Increased students’ intrinsic motivation and enjoyment.

• Reduced negative emotions (anger, anxiety, boredom).

• Crucially, it was not perceived as wasting time.

Course-unrelated humour is risky

• Did not improve relationships.

• Reduced perceived interestingness and clarity (experts).

• Offered no clear motivational benefits.

• Supports the idea that humour detached from content can act as a “seductive detail”.

Self-disparaging humour is mixed

• Did not reliably improve teaching quality.

• No consistent benefits for clarity or time on task.

• Neither clearly helpful nor strongly harmful in this design.

Aggressive humour is clearly harmful

• Damaged teacher–student relationships.

• Increased students’ anger and anxiety.

• Reduced perceived teaching quality.

Mechanism

• Humour affects motivation and emotions indirectly, mainly through its impact on perceived teaching quality (especially relationships and interestingness).

So… not all humour is helpful! Some of that is more obvious - aggression doesn’t have a place in the classroom, including when it’s cloaked in “humour”. What was most interesting to me was that humour unrelated to the course content wasn’t good, nor was it neutral, but it was actually a distraction with negative impacts.

Humour that directly supports the learning content enhances teaching quality and student motivation without costing instructional time; humour that is unrelated or aggressive undermines both.

PS I am English-born, living in New Zealand. Humour is the correct spelling for us ;)

Edit: I’ve been thinking on this a bit more. The study was conducted in Germany and since humour is quite subjective between cultures I would be really curious to see this replicated in another country and see if the results held.

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Growth and positive change should feel uncomfortable

I am a big believer in not staying still. Metaphorically mostly, but also physically to some degree. Growth often feels uncomfortable; by definition it is at the edge of our comfort zone. We need to keep moving, keep pushing those boundaries, keep being brave enough to move out of our comfort zone and make mistakes to learn and grow. This substack is something new to help me continue to grow.

Why this?

I have gained an awful lot from what other educators have shared in a space like this. My first reason for doing this it to have a space to collect my thoughts, and secondly - if I find something that’s useful, someone else might find it useful too.

Why now?

I just finished a position at the end of last year (2025). I was the Associate Principal in a large boys school in New Zealand. I had a significant and full-on portfolio. I have now moved into the field of initial teacher training (ITE), hoping to be part of the solution to New Zealand’s teacher shortage. Part of this role involves a research element, so it’s a good time to take a breath and make the time to create this place to gather and share that research. I’m hoping it will help organise my thoughts and categorise the research I come across.

What now?

I don’t really know! I don’t know how often I’ll post, nor whether anyone else will find it interesting enough to engage with.

About me

I trained as a Secondary School Maths Teacher in the UK, after a Maths with Computer Science degree at Leeds University. I taught in the UK for a few years and moved to New Zealand in 2011. I continued my Maths teaching career in a well known boys school in Auckland, being lucky enough to have lots of opportunities for growth and development over the 14 years I was there. After 4 years as Associate Principal it was time to look further afield for my next opportunities, so now I’m a teaching fellow, training up beginning teachers with the most recent and up-to-date evidence-based research for best teaching practice that I can find.