Subscribe
Sign in
Home
Notes
It's Your Time You're Wasting
Archive
Leaderboard
About
Faster reading, faster progress?
The promise, the problems, and the proof we still need
Mar 3
•
David Didau
33
2
7
What are we really doing when we let students opt out?
How low expectations protect adults and diminish children
Mar 1
•
David Didau
92
8
15
Surprising new findings on reading comprehension
And if it is, how should we teach it?
Feb 24
•
David Didau
50
15
15
Decomposition for dummies: how to break down a curriculum
Does the way knowledge is stored in the brain tell us anything about how to design a curriculum?
Feb 21
•
David Didau
43
1
11
Opening the closed circle: why being wrong helps us find out what's right
Falsifiability, pseudoscience and why "it works for me" is a pedagogical dead end
Feb 19
•
David Didau
50
7
14
Most Popular
View all
The myth of teaching children to 'read for pleasure'
Dec 6, 2025
•
David Didau
79
4
26
The Dual Coding Delusion
Nov 1, 2025
•
David Didau
48
19
When retrieval practice goes wrong
Jan 31
•
David Didau
42
7
12
Are schools traumagenic?
Jan 17
•
David Didau
39
1
23
Latest
Top
Discussions
Good teaching is not a special measure
Why the principles that support children with special educational needs are the foundations of effective teaching for all
Feb 14
•
David Didau
75
8
23
Overconfident by design
How overconfidence drives action, distorts judgement, and fuels learning
Feb 11
•
David Didau
19
1
6
Couch to 5k Writing
From sentence structure to essay mastery
Feb 7
•
David Didau
42
14
11
The Feedback Continuum: why reducing feedback helps students learn
Paul Kirschner recently published this post on reducing feedback.
Feb 4
•
David Didau
42
9
17
When retrieval practice goes wrong
Three rules for effective retrieval practice
Jan 31
•
David Didau
42
7
12
Betwixt and between: learning in liminal space
Why flexible understanding emerges slowly, unevenly, and at the cost of what we thought we knew
Jan 28
•
David Didau
32
7
10
The enduring appeal of edu-nonsense
How pseudoscience, placebo interventions and invented statistics continue to shape classroom practice despite decades of contrary evidence
Jan 24
•
David Didau
80
15
30
See all
David Didau: The Learning Spy
The Learning Spy Substack is a sharp, provocative dispatch from the front lines of education, where ideas are tested, myths are challenged, and nothing is taken for granted.
Subscribe
Recommendations
View all 28
The Next 30 Years
Robert Pondiscio
We Are In Beta
Niall Alcock
The Bell Ringer
Holly Korbey
Paul Kirschner
Paul Kirschner
Comment is Freed
Sam Freedman
David Didau: The Learning Spy
Subscribe
About
Archive
Recommendations
Sitemap
This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please
turn on JavaScript
or unblock scripts