Summer 2026 Quarterly Newsletter
Hello summer! It has been a ridiculously hot one and I hope you weren’t affected by all
the burning. I was lucky to get lots of camping in, accompanied by Starlink and work,
obvs. Summer is meant to be when us education-interested people take a breather but
I’m sure its been in the back of our minds. It really is a calling. Although that argument is
often used to underpay teachers 😁
Signals
Lucky Dip
If you know a school-aged person who would benefit from a scholarship, the
Victorian Government lists a heap of local ones here:
www.vic.gov.au/student-scholarships#scholarships
Some interesting research roundups from 2025. Edutopia has one:
www.edutopia.org/visual-essay/the-10-most-significant-education-studies-of-2025
And the guy who seems to be everywhere on my feeds at the moment, Peps Mccrea:
snacks.pepsmccrea.com/p/edu-research-review-24-25
The cognitive science revolution continues to embed itself everywhere at pace. I try
not to have a strong position as I don’t want to offend anyone who might have it (or not
have it) deep in their ideological core. Our professional judgement is critical so take
what you want from this interesting one from the folks at Edutopia:
edutopia.org/article/15-tips-to-align-your-teaching-with-brain-science
If you want to go full nerd, here’s a 188 page piece on social and behavioural success
suggestions from the states: (or you could just get AI to give you the TL;DR)
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED617775.pdf
Certain corners of the edu-verse seem to think differentiation is dead (there words not
mine). That seems slightly beyond the pale to me. Alex Quigley, an interesting education
writer from the UK
https://alexquigley.co.uk/adaptive-teaching-stretch-and-challenge/
Again if you get a kick out of journal articles this one is open-source (which can you
believe, authors have to pay to make happen). We often show learners examples of
good ones and bad ones. This article provides some pointers about how to approach
showing bad ones:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-025-10071-x
You may have heard of Jared Cooney Horvath, a US ex-teacher turned neuroscientist.
He used to work at The University of Melbourne… does he still? I can’t figure it out.
Anyways, his new book “The Digital Delusion” is full of things that might not be a big
surprise to those who’ve been sceptical of screen use in education. He also testified to
US congress recently and nailed it:
It’s less than 5 minutes. Great comments under it as well. As a Gen Xer I’m so glad my
childhood was analogue.
Happening
Event Worth Your Time
Many are questioning the slow uptake of explicit teaching in teacher training (please
don’t come at me if you hate this stuff!). Adelaide University are offering free courses
on it:
And phonics:
If the explicit crowd don’t enrage you too much, there’s a conference full of people into
it next month (I’ll be there with bright hair):
events.humanitix.com/researched-ballarat-2026
Despite just having a cry about edtech I’m also going to the edutech conference in
Sydney in June. This thing is massive so if you want to meet new people, check it out:
www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/edutech-australia/index.stm
I’m hosting a learning game festival on 1 August at the Preston City Hall, “The Learning
Game Playground”. As the saying goes, ‘learning is the brain’s favourite way to learn’.
I’ve been making learning games since I started teaching and the engagement and
learning that comes out of it are really impactful.
The Breakdown
One big idea, made plain
As a society we seem to be valuing expertise less and less. Look at the loss of
confidence in science as an example. The same is true in education. Rising through the
ranks in an organisation doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good at the core role that one
started with. Often experience is translated as expertise even when the practices
haven’t changed. Expertise can also come from outside the relevant field with new
insights. Perhaps systems reward confidence and compliance with promotion, as an
expert who challenges existing beliefs can cause headaches in a large organisation.
Something that has always confused me is the idea that we can change the teaching
profession by changing teacher training. Student teachers get dropped into existing
schools one at a time. They’ve often got the latest ideas rolling around in their head but
as newbies can be told to pay their dues before they get a seat at the table. After five
years of due-paying, maybe they’ve changed their pedagogy to match the institution
rather than transformed it with their new ideas.
SketchPad
Visual Ideation
This absolutely fascinating study done by a US researcher and educator, Lee Jenkins,
looked at how much students love school. I am sure this will come as little surprise to
anyone teaching in high school 😁
Whether this is also true closer to home in Australia, I can’t say, but on the face of it, it
looks fairly accurate. However I’d be interested to know if students experience a loss of
enthusiasm for other things not related to school. A lot of changes that occur in a
young person’s life are often attributed to school, even though they might not be the
cause. Like Ken Robinson’s claim that schools kill creativity. I’d want to see evidence of
young people’s creativity levels from 5-18 for those that didn’t go to school as well for
comparison (and yet it is the most viewed TED talk on education)
Read more here:
www.educationtoday.com.au/news-detail/Education-5477
Badly Drawn Lines
We Don’t Do Learning Styles
It is scary how widespread belief in this left brain v right brain thing is. I confess I
believed it until very recently. It has a certain attractive vibe to it I guess. There is
slightly more activity in the left hemisphere for language, but the difference between
the halves has been ma-hoo-ssively blown out of proportion. The primary division of
labour between hemispheres is in the sensory and motor domain.
Perhaps, like zodiac signs, we find this stuff easy to continue to believe when we’ve
believed it for so long and turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think good teaching
involves all of the dot points in this image at one point or another.
This Season’s Progress
What I’m Trying Right Now
I am more and more doubtful about how helpful AI is for writing learning progressions.
The problem is that it can quickly make something that looks like a learning progression,
but expertise in this area isn’t generally found on the internet, and so clutching
analysis from said internet, as LLMs do, isn’t all that helpful. In the era of AI, expertise is
more needed than ever. If you couldn’t do it yourself (way slower), you won’t know if
what it spits out is nonsense. Therefore I find I’m using it less and less for that kind of
stuff. You end up spending so much time fixing its lame-ness that its quicker to do it
from scratch. Great at making giant cats in videos though.
We’ve set up a quick 2-minute survey for schools to get a snapshot of their assessment
integrity:
It gives you some advice at the end about some next steps, based on where you are at
the moment. It’s free obvs so check it out if you have 120 seconds up your sleeve and
are interested in that kind of thing 😊
I’m also hosting a group of school leaders from Ridgway School in Wellington next
month. I am super excited to show off some progressive and just plain interesting
educational spaces around Melbourne for three days: Preshil, Princes Hill Primary
School, St John’s Catholic Primary School (Footscray), Learning Environments Applied
Research Network – LeaRN Centre (University of Melbourne), Woodleigh School, ACMI.
We’ve partnered with Young Folks, an absolutely outstanding agency who are helping
us to update our visual style… By next newsletter we’ll have nice, aligned visuals. I’m a
mega design fan but am not as skilled as this lot so I can’t wait to share our new look
soon! Here is sneak peak of what they’re brewing:
Our team is also growing. My long time colleague and dear friend Megan Collins is now
part of LL. She is there to tell me when I am wrong and do all kinds of progression
wizardry.
I hope you all have a great rest of your summer and that the work year starts smoothly.
See you again when the leaves start dropping. And no, AI was in no part of writing this
quarterly thingy… hopefully that is obvious by my semi-literate writing style 😆
Cheers
Ben 🦄