Teachers are not being provided with the knowledge and evidence to make their teaching truly effective.

Complete report

Scientists know a lot about effective learning and teaching. In the past several decades, cognitive psychologists and other learning researchers have performed thousands of studies on effective learning and teaching practices.

In some cases, research findings have gone against conventional wisdom or common practice. For example, varied practice (in terms of the variety of problems or exercises that the learner engages in) often results in more long-term learning than predictable practice. Research has also established that tests are quite powerful learning events — they are not just ways of evaluating student learning.

Often, the effectiveness of these techniques can only be established by evaluating the learner in a particular way. Varied practice often decreases performance in the short-term, but increases performance in the long-term. In other cases, the effectiveness of certain learning experiences can only be seen on tests that evaluate “transfer” — the ability of a student to apply what they learned to a novel situation — or only after other learning events (such as after a lecture).

Several research-supported ways to teach effectively are, therefore, counter to everyday experience, especially if we’re used to evaluating students through immediate tests on their ability to perform exactly as practiced. Given the daily challenges that teachers face and the conflicting information teachers often receive, we wondered:​

Several lines of evidence suggest that teachers might have difficulty identifying some effective learning and teaching strategies. A recent review of teacher training textbooks found that they contained little to no discussion of the large body of learning research, and even passed off ideas with little research support as hard science. Myths about learning — such as the idea of “learning styles” and there being “right-brained” and “left-brained” learners — also persist in the general population, in spite of experts’ repeated efforts to clarify the lack of support for such ideas in the literature. Many businesses also sell products to teachers and schools premised on these myths, promoting discredited — or simply nonsensical — ideas about learning.

Researchers have long been interested in teacher beliefs. Beliefs, however, can be conceptualized and tested in a variety of ways. Much research on teacher beliefs has focused on overarching beliefs about teaching and learning: Is learning fundamentally about transmitting knowledge? Or is it fundamentally about constructing one’s own knowledge? To what extent do teachers believe in — and support the development of — self-regulated learners: learners who can learn effectively on their own?

Some studies have also explored the relationship between teacher strategy instruction and student strategy use. These lines of research reveal that teachers possess a wide-ranging set of beliefs about learning that is, at times, inconsistent, and context-dependent.

Research on more specific beliefs about research-supported learning strategies — whether testing is more effective than rereading for remembering information, for example — is more rare. Most research on these specific beliefs have focused on students. Surprisingly little research has focused on teachers.

To our knowledge, only a single survey has asked teachers about these research-supported learning strategies. Another recent survey has explored the strategies that academic support centers at universities recommend. To address this gap, we conducted a survey of more than 200 educators about several research-supported learning principles.

While our findings are disconcerting, educators themselves are not to blame. Most teachers work hard each day in often very difficult situations. But clearly our systems of support for teachers must change to provide educators with more robust knowledge about effective teaching practices.