The Trump administration on Tuesday slashed staff at the Department of Education – firing roughly 1,300 employees – as part of its long-planned effort to eliminate the agency entirely. The move leaves the department with 2,183 employees, down from more than 4,000 at the beginning of the year. The cuts also follow recent leaks that President Donald Trump was planning […] … learn more→

A widely used principle in economics to understand how people make decisions is that of rationality : people behave in ways that achieve the greatest possible benefit. This benefit, mathematically represented by a utility function , is typically the economic gain we receive from our actions (in the context of those of others). However, the emergence of experimental economics , which […] … learn more→

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the government will deport lawful permanent residents who support Hamas and came to the U.S. as students with an intent “to rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, antisemitic activities,” referencing the Palestinian rights protests at universities in 2024. “And if you end up having a green card – not […] … learn more→

Schools have always sought to supervise students and their teachers, with a teaching method long based on authority and discipline. However, pedagogical knowledge, psychological knowledge, public policies as well as social transformations (mass schooling, rise of individual rights, new educational expectations) have largely contributed to transforming educational standards and the way in which we interpret, […] … learn more→

You’ve probably noticed lately that a lot of people are trying out alternatives to the big social media networks X, Instagram and Facebook. For example, after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and started allowing far more disinformation and hateful content on the site, renamed X, advertisers and users started backing away. More recently, Meta’s decision to roll back hate […] … learn more→

The U.S. educational landscape has been drastically transformed since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered school campuses five years ago. Access to high-quality teachers and curriculum developed by teachers is shrinking, for example. Likewise, there has been a loss of emotional support for students and a decline in the school use of technology and social media. As education scholars focused on literacy practices […] … learn more→

Should young teenagers be banned from using social media? That’s the question being discussed by British MPs debating a bill that proposes the government should decide within a year whether to raise the age children can have social media accounts from 13 to 16. It follows a recent petition on the same topic that garnered nearly 130,000 signatures, […] … learn more→

Let’s look at the following scene: Adrian, age ten, sits down to do his math homework. After reading the first problem, he gets up angrily and shouts: “I don’t understand anything!” He then abandons the task and complains to his mother, who patiently sits down with him and explains what he has to do. It […] … learn more→

Earlier this year I received comments on an academic manuscript of mine as part of the usual peer review process, and noticed something strange. My research focuses on ensuring trustworthy evidence is used to inform policy, practice and decision making. I often collaborate with groups like the World Health Organization to conduct systematic reviews to […] … learn more→

I’ve just finished reviewing a number of research grant applications. One of the things I noticed, and not in a good way, was that writers very often repeated themselves. That is, I not only read the same sentences, but also entire paragraphs and in some instances several paragraphs, in the answers to different questions. Now, […] … learn more→