ResearchEdd NYC 2026 Raw Notes

 As the title suggests, these notes are raw, unedited, and blended with my thoughts in addition to what the speakers are saying. If you read something you don't like, it may be my interpretation and not their meaning, so don't hold anything against them.

Keynote 1: Using the Science of Learning to Rebuild Students' Learning Power: A Pathway to Equitable Academic Outcomes by Zaretta Hammond

What is the relationship between equity and cognitive science?

She was a writing teacher:  "Math gets you into college. Writing keeps you there." So, if you are a sound reader and writer, you are going to struggle in college. She wanted students to recognize their own errors in their writing. That led her to learning science. That eventually led her to write Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. 

Equity is reduing the predictability of who succeeds and who fails and cultivates the unigifts and talents of every student, regardless of race, color, or zip code. 

In the age of AI, it is more important than it has ever been for student to learn how to learn and think on their own. Without those skills, they are at the mercy of the tech. They will not be ready to evaluate information.

Her next book, Cognitive Redlining, discusses how kids in lower income schools are disadvantaged by the trends in instructional practices. Cognitive science can reduce inequity by working with student brains. Rosenshine's principles of instruction are valid and wonderful, but they have kept us focused on teaching rather than learning.

"How do we leverage the science of learning to help students master the craftsmanship of learning?"

Design principles for craftsmanship

1. Only the learner learns - students' brains must be active (this is not the same as engagement or fun; it's about their thinking with cognitive flexibility)
2. Content must be processed and remembered in order to be retrieved. Retrieval practice is at the end of the information processing cycle. (SHE JUST QUOTED KEVIN WASHBURN!!)
3. Learning requires cognitive friction - Productive struggle is real, but it has to be productive. You have to get them to the place where the struggle can be productive, not just set them off to flounder. This leads to learning for understanding rather than assignment completion. We should not over-scaffold, or they won't become independent. (If you picked up a baby every time they stumbled or lost their balance, they would never learn to walk.) If scaffolds are never removed, they are not scaffolds; they are crutches that lead to dependence on the teacher.

We are "personal trainers" of students' cognitive development. If a personal trainer asks you to do 5 push ups, and you can only do 2, they don't jump down and do the other 3 for you. They give you some water and tell you to get back to it.

One off strategies do not help; these must become routines that are automated. New mental models must be developed. There is a human side of change; recognize that the first attempt will be messy like the first pancake and work that into the evaluation system.

Session 1: Getting Ahead of Behavior: Lightning Fast Behavior Moves by Zach Groshell

Let's face it; behavior is not improving. We have to do something.

The "putting out fires" model is exhausting for teachers and interferes with student learning.

They can't learn anything they aren't paying attention to.

Inattention and attention are contagious - fidgety behaviors spread, so do leaning forward behaviors

How to get ahead of it (adapted from Doug Lamov's TLAC)

1. Give clear directions - clear, umambiguous, sequenced, posted visibly
2. Be seen looking - swivel, tiptoes, hands cupped around ears - exaggerated body motions to show that you are looking and listening
3. Narrate the positive - state what is going right - "Kate, that's what I'm talking about." Acknowledge and praise the things you want to see continue.
4. Correct with the least invasive intervention - nonverbal first, "All means all" reminders to the group, anonymous individual corrections ("Back of the room is almost there" or "Waiting on 2, waiting on 1. Thank you." Then, private individual correction (This is not your go to; it's after other things don't work and after you have everyone else working on something). If nothing else has worked, quick public individual correction (whispered name).

Non-verbal behaviors can be clear and subtle without getting into a kids space and being overbearing.

Will this solve all of your behavior issues? No.  But it will create a better culture in which you can address those.

Session 2: How Can I Help - Using the Science of Learning to Help Students Study by Beth Hawks

I have no notes on this session for obvious reasons, but you can find my slides on thelearninghawk.com

Keynote 2: Knowing What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do: Becoming an Expert Teacher by Nidhi Sachdeva

Did her research with Paul Kirschner 

When something unexpected happens in your classroom, what do you do?  How do you know what to do?

Sully - Miracle on the Hudson - When the bird strike took out his engines, he had 208 seconds to decide what to do before the plane would crash. His expertise guided his decision making when the situation exceeded the checklists and the protocols.

Teachers make 1200-1500 spontaneous decisions every day

The best teachers benefit their students for at least 3 years after they stop teaching them. The effect is the most profound on those most disadvantaged. Expert teachers close the achievement gap because gains are made by everyone, but those who have been disadvantaged will make more gains more quickly.

What is an expert teacher? In some fields (chess, sports, business), there are measurable objective data points to establish rankings. This is less true in education. Much of our impact is not measured in test scores, and a lot of it shows up far after they leave our classrooms.

We need to know how to spot an expert teacher because we cannot develop what we cannot name. 

• Deep content knowledge
• Have fundamental knowledge and understanding of how we learn
• Masters in pedagoy and and instructional tools
• Classroom management
• Ability to adapt
• Create explicit, engaging, equitable, and successful learning environments

Both science and craft

• Science: Deep understanding of theories and principles
• Craft: Practical insight that comes from experience

Five Building Blocks of Teacher Knowledge and Skills

1. Domain Knowledge - You cannot teach content that you do not deeply understand, what examples will illuminate and what examples will mislead, what is coming next
2. Cognitive Psychology - understanding how memory works, how understanding is strengthened, how instruction can support or overload the learner, how novices and experts process information and solve problems differently
3. Didactics - Knowing how to teach your subject is the bridge between content and cognition. "A butterfly forgets that it was once a caterpillar." Translates knowledge into something learnable and usable. Knowing calculus and teaching calculus are two different things.
4. Tools - Be critical and selective users of technologies and instruments, whether textbooks and mini-whiteboards or visualizers and EdTech tools. Beware of the innovation illusion; newer isn't always better. Ask the question, "Does this serve learning?"
5. Pedagogy - How we relate. Underpins instructional decisions and shapes the teacher-student relationship, ensures a positive classroom environment. Without this, the other four building blocks are tools without conscience.

The craft of teaching is accumulated wisdom about content, students, curriculum, and pedagogy.  It's wisdom in action. 

The science of teaching should happen during a teacher's initial preparation. The craft happens through continuous professional development as they teach. Best case scenario: New teachers have the science, but not much craft yet (That's assuming the science is being taught well in colleges).

Developing expertise comes from 

• Experience - learning on the job, helps you develop quickly early, but tends to plateau without the right conditions
• Organized professional development - workshops, courses, conferences, coaching programs - provides inspiration, but tends to prioritize exposure over practice
• Deliberate practice - consciously and systematically improving instruction through repeated practice

Deliberate practice is not routine repetition and isn't accomplished just by teaching more lessons. It is highly structured, purposeful, and effortful with a specific focus for improvement, including feedback and immediate repetition to incorporate the feedback.

Deliberate practice needs a specific goal, not vaguely worded hope. (The difference between a New Year's Resolution and an actionable goal.)

Sully's 40 years of deliberate practice, experience of emergencies, and time spent BUILDING expertise allowed him to act rather than panic. Teachers need schools to provide protected time for practice and feedback, coaching cultures rather than just evaluations, and leaders who value and model improvement.

Session 3: I planned to attend a session, but I decided to catch up with Andrew Watson and talk with Zach Groshell and Gene Tavernetti instead.  This was the right decision, but it means that I, sadly, have no notes for you.

Session 4: “Kids Do Well When They Can”: Misconceptions About Neurodiversity and How You Can Remove Barriers in the Classroom by Kristen Simmers and MB Spencer

Kristen's brother was born without a corpus collosum. He was seen at school as a kid who couldn't, while they saw him at home as someone who very much could. Her sister had no diagnosis until she was an adult, and she was just labeled as difficult. She is now an ER doctor.  MB was a regular classroom teacher with a high number of special needs students. She realized that the primary delivers of special education services had no special education training. 

Neurodiversity is an umbrella term that incorporates ADHD, autism, Tourette syndrome, OCD, dyslexia, and many others.

Neurodiverse conditions are differences in brain wiring. They will have mismatched skillsets; they may struggle in one area but excel in another. The labels are inconsistent, so you can't make assumptions about all kids with autism based on one kid you knew with autism (or any other condition). It's not uncommon for a person to have a great vocabulary and be highly verbal but have poor performance in writing. They might have high math reasoning and low math performance.

Dyslexia - Every civilization has spoken language. Speaking disorders are rare. Reading is an artificial skill. We are not biologically wired to do it. Learning it is incredibly complex and involves many areas of the brain working together in milliseconds. The brain repurposes some of your facial recognition skills to create letter recognition.

Stanislas Dehaene's research is leading toward subsets of dyslexia, 

• phonology based
• grapheme phoneme conversion
• visual code for letters (letter position, mixing nearby words)

Autism - moving away from the spectrum description and making it more of a wheel. Students have different positions in different areas on the spokes of the wheel.

ADHD - Executive function dysfunction

Neurological in origin, asynchronous development of skills

Not about attention or hyperactivity but about executive function (kids generally have trouble with EF). The name came from what were able to see rather than the cause. This leads to problems with self-regulation, self-awareness, self-evaluation, and motivation.

There is a different motivation structure than a fully developed brain. The part of the brain involved doesn't finish developing in most humans until 25. Don't make this an excuse - "They can't do it because their brains aren't fully developed yet." Rather, take advantage of the fact that this is the time of highest neuroplasticity, so it is time to harness that.

For most of us, a balance of rewards and consequences determine our actions.  ADHD brains seek dopamine and fail to predict consequences. They seek out things that are interesting, novel, challenging, urgent, or playful because those things produce dopamine. Sometimes, their argumentative nature happens because conflict produces dopamine.

Everything that is helpful for neurodivergent kids is good for ALL learners. 

Diagnoses happen when it impedes your life. Don't diagnose yourself just because you have a quirky behavior.

Practical Strategies

Recognize variability. They will not all respond exactly the same way to instruction or interventions. Research doesn't give a recipe; it gives ingredients. 

Audit your physical environment for sensory issues, managing choices, visual scaffold, a strength based emotional climate, and explanations of the "why" when it comes to rules.

Resource binders should be available.  Visual cues in their workspace will help them be ready. Don't let them start work until their workspace is ready. Notetaking guides and templates are good scaffolds. Printed copies of the notes are not. They need to write whatever they can. 

Panel: Thinking About Implementation Outside NYC by Zach Groshell, Meg Lee, Ian Kelleher, and Lynn Gaffney

Q:  Can you explain more about the mix of the science of learning and the practical craft?

A:  Zach: Developing teachers in the science of learning is a lot like developing professional athletes. Current NBA players are better at basketball than their coaches, but they still need coaching. Teachers can be well versed in pedagogical knowledge, but they may need coaching in the implementation. It isn't imposed; it's collaborative.  Meg: We need to look at what the science of learning can do for children first, but adults a close second. Balance what we want for every learner with the recognition that teaching is really hard and getting harder, so we can have teachers put down the things that aren't working well (if differentiation isn't working, let them stop).  Lynn:  We haven't been working in an evidence based profession, but that is changing. 

Q: What are three science of learning strategies that have been criminally underused?

A: Lynn: Spaced retrieval. Meg: Both students and adults need time to process deeply. Give more wait time deliberately.  Zach: Focus on design, not just delivery. Train a few people in your school to recognize whether the design of materials use evidence based principles or not.

Q: If you could wave a magic wand and have one thing appear in every classroom, what it would be?

A: Meg: Ian Kelleher's most recent writing about AI.  Lynn: Zach should appear in every classroom.  Zach: Explicit instruction in every classroom

Q: It's better to learn from other people's mistakes than your own. Are there any science of learning principles that are being misused?

A: Lynn: A lot of districts see science of learning as an add on, just another new initiative. Zach: Recognize that coaching is needed, not just one day PD sessions. One day sessions are great for inspiration, but there need to be habits developed in systems.  Meg: People are overwhelmed with a whole lot of strategies without an understanding of the whole picture. Then, teachers don't know how to apply strategies fluidly or across contexts. 

Q: Meg says, "You can wait out a roll out." How does it look to have brain science just incorporated into the fabric?

A: Meg: You can't just have "the year of the brain" any more than a dentist can have "the year of the tooth." You need to incorporate teacher expertise and wisdom, not just lay science of learning on top of lesson plans.

Q: What can you remove of replace in current school structure:

A: Lynn: Remove hand raising; replace with mini whiteboards.  Zach: Principals are following marching orders, even when they conflict with what their teachers are doing. Leadership needs to stand up and say, "It's just too much. We've divided our attention too much. Let's just focus on the essential pieces." Meg: Ask how organizations are spending time and resources, teacher time, student time, and tools that just have a sticker slapped on it that says "research based." Develop a "baloney-ometer."

Q: Who is your academic crush?

A: Lynn: Carl Hentrick, Zach Groshell, Gene Tavernetti, Mike Shmalker, Doug Lamov, Patrice Bain, Karen Chenowith. Zach: Marcy Stein (his college professor and member of Project Follow Through), Meg: Teachers with blogs or who speak at events like this or go on podcasts to talk about what is happening in their classrooms.

The research informed instruction community is altruistic, slightly crazy, love teaching, and love their kids and teachers.  Reach out to them, and enjoy more of their content.

Research Ed - Denver 2025 #rEDDenver2025

This is my fourth Research Ed conferences (3rd as a presenter).  One of the wonderful things about this conference is that everyone learns from everyone else.  Since you can't be here, I am taking notes for you to learn from as well.  (I can't provide notes on the first session since I am giving it, but you can go to my website www.thelearninghawk.com if you want the slides.)  Please recognize that these are notes taken in real time with little to no editing. They will be a mix of what the presenters said and my own thoughts. While I try to note the difference between those two things, I don't always keep up.  Please don't hold any presenter responsible for something you read here.

Keynote:  From Routine to Retrieval by Patrice Bain and Amber Haven

In 2006, she had an average classroom with average scores. Research was done in lab settings but not in real classrooms.  She met a couple of researchers who talked to her about memory.  She realized that teachers are taught how to teach, but few are taught how people learn.

Understanding the learning process is essential for making any kind of impact in the classroom.

Research needed to happen in classrooms that have the messiness that lab setting don't (intercom interruptions, fire drills, etc.)

"Knowing how to teach by understanding how students learn is a matter of instructional equity." - Jim Heal and Meg Lee

If we start teaching them how to learn in elementary school, just think how much better their high school lives will be.

"Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn." - Daniel Willingham

(Personal reflection:  Students have been told that they all learn differently and taught to find their "learning style."  The reality is much more empowering because they only have to find out how to learn, not some mystical idea of how THEY learn.)

We have to put information in, but storage won't be robust without retrieval.  Retrieval strengthens storage.

Power Tools:  Retrieval, Spacing, Interleaving, and Metacognition

Retrieval:  Pulling information out

Spacing: Revisiting retrieval over time - It interrupts forgetting, strengthening memory

Interleaving:  Comparing and contrasting similar items

Metacognition: Discriminating what you know from what you don't

Students spend most of their day shoving information into the your brain. It's hard to organize it or reflect on it unless you retrieve it.  It's like organizing your closet by finding an item and putting it on a shelf.

"When students consistently find themselves in a predictable learning environment, they can let their guard down to engage." Mitch Weathers

Routines are the best way to reduce anxiety in all students, but especially those who are prone to high anxiety.  They know what they are supposed to do, and they know what happens next. Transition times become less chaotic. 

Cognitive Load Theory is important because finding the sweet spot where students can process information impacts their learning dramatically. Can you drive smoothly in England where you don't know where you are going, have a car with the wheel on the other side, are on the left side of the road, and have to use roundabouts.  That is cognitive overload.

Don't be afraid to face your desks forward and reduce the amount of stuff on your walls. 

Working memory is limited (4-7 things that require focus) - How can you lessen their cognitive overload?

(Personal Note:  I see the chunking example with letters all of the time.  I would like to see it with actual content at a conference.)

"Background knowledge allows chunking, which makes more room in your working memory, making it easier to do something with that information." - Daniel Willingham

Scaffolds are not meant to be permanent, but they need to know when you are going to remove them so they have a chance to build proficiency in the task.  Everyone should have the same final goal, but scaffolds can be different to meet the needs of students.  "If everyone has a scaffold all of the time, it's not a scaffold. It's your lesson plan."

Atomization - breaking down complex concepts into small pieces.  When teaching weather, break it down into each of the variables that affects the weather before putting it back together.

Direct Instruction is teaching directly, but it is not a lecture. There should be instructions for students to do something (turn and talk, choral response, whiteboard answers, etc.) every two minutes.

Dual coding - provide images alongside verbal information. Have kids "sketch and tell."

Seek evidence. Don't blindly accept.

Rethinking Intrinsic Motivation by Andrew Watson

I was a little bit late to this session because I couldn't find the room.  I may have missed something important.

Intentionally Provocative Questions: 

Why don't student learn fractions with the same joy that they learn the names of colors or animal sounds. (Why is school demotivating?)

Why do schools teach things that aren't intrinsically motivating?

David Geary's Evolutionary Theory - Our species is unlike others in that we have to learn. Other animals are born ready to go without much teaching. A turtle is born ready to turtle.  

We learn things that help with avoiding predators, getting food, or allow us to successfully reproduce. Those things are biologically primary.  Learning animal sounds are obvious in their benefit to helping us avoid predators. Calculating the area under a curve does not fit into any of those categories, so it is biologically secondary.

Because we want our students to learn biologically secondary things because they are culturally valued, we need social institutions to make sure we teach them these things.

Back to the Intentionally Provocative Questions: 

Why don't student learn fractions with the same joy that they learn the names of colors or animal sounds. (Why is school demotivating?) You are intrinsically motivated to learn biologically primary things but not biologically secondary ones.

Why do schools teach things that aren't intrinsically motivating? The point of a school is to teach things that students are not intrinsically motivated to learn.  If they were naturally motivated to learn it, we wouldn't need to teach it to them.

Teachers are often scolded for not fostering intrinsic motivation, but that you should actually foster realism. 

Self Determination Theory - 

Six motivational states - Amotivation, 4 kinds of extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation

Amotivation - Absent

External and Internal Extrinsic Motivations - Internal extrinsic motivation does help students learn more, but external extrinsic motivation does not.  Internal extrinsic motivation is valuable but not enjoyable.

Intrinsic Motivation - Internal - Enjoyable

Example:  Some people truly enjoy exercise (intrinsic motivation). Others do it because they know it is valuable, but they don't enjoy it (internal extrinsic motivation)

You cannot move someone to intrinsic motivation, but you can move them from a motivation or external extrinsic motivation into internal extrinsic motivation (teaching them to value it even if they don't enjoy it) with:

- Autonomy

- Relatedness

- Competence

Any one strategy can had different effects on different students, at different moments, with different content.

Popularizing the 3 Box Memory Model: by Rob McEntarffer

I was late to this one too. I spent too much time talking to Andrew about his topic after his session.

Teachers and administrators must have a learning theory that matches reality. It must predict the outcome of teaching decisions.  No matter how much you believe in it, if it doesn't result in learning, you shouldn't use it.  Operating under an unrealistic learning theory gets in the way of learning.

Are you using this model to help making teaching decisions? Or are you just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks?

Personal Reflection:  To make a model stick at your school, you must have a few teacher "influencers" to keep using the same language with other teachers as well as students. They need to own it, adapt it to your context, and be enthusiastic about it with others.  

The pendulum swings from emphasizing content or skills every few years.

Get the people who know about things and those who are affected by it talking to each other.  In universities, the people in the education department don't ever talk to the people in the psychology department.  Sometimes, there is an educational psychology department, and they don't talk to the other two either.

It's imperative to ask "What is working?  What didn't work?" every time you implement something new. 

Why Students Forget and What You Can Do About It by Marcie Samayoa

I am very excited for this one.  I've been following Ms. Sam on Twitter for years. I'm amazed at how tiny she is.  

You have a great day in class. Everybody is engaged and with you. The next day, you ask them a question, and you just get an empty stare.

Showed the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. You forget a lot of content quickly.  Even a few minutes shows a high percentage of loss unless there is effortful practice. Each act of spaced retrieval results in less forgetting. 

Retrieval strengthens memory, enhances transfer, and always outperforms re-reading.

When you are doing a review, you should ask students questions that they have to answer without using their notes or book. You can't and shouldn't review everything from the previous lesson; you should figure out what they have learned in a previous lesson that connects to today's lesson and have them retrieve those. (If you are going to teach about isotopes today, you need to have them retrieve things about the periodic table and atomic structure, but you don't need to cover electromagnetic radiation that day.) This automatically works in space and interleaving.  Don't take more than 5-10 minutes of class time to do this.

Make sure students know retrievals are not quizzes or tests.  They aren't being graded on them; this is purely for the benefit of their memory.

I want to be in Ms. Sam's chemistry class.

Science or Snake Oil? How to Tell the Difference by Holly Lane

It is lamentable that graduates from schools of education are not trained in how to find education research or how to evaluate it for themselves.  

We are bombarded with snake oil in the field of education. There is a lot of garbage, and if you don't have the tools do distinguish good from bad, you will end up using a lot of garbage because there is just so much more of it out there.

We don't have an FDA in education. You can sell anything you want and claim that it is based on science.

Every program currently sold that is related to reading claims that it is based on "the science of reading." Social media makes it even worse by amplifying popular but non-scientific programs. 

Because there is so much misinformation, there is still a huge gap between research and practice.

The scale of evaluating evidence (1 is the lowest quality)

1. Anecdotal
2. Expert opinion
3. Case study 
4. Correlational study
5. Quasi-experimental design
6. Randomized control trials
7. Systematic review
8. Meta-analysis

Indicators of effectiveness

• Statistical significance
• Effect size - How many standard deviations above the mean is the experimental group compared to the control group

Indicators of trustworthiness

• Publication source
• Research Journals
• Practitioner Journals
• Magazines and blog (no vetting)
• Books 
• Commissioned reviews usually go through substantial vetting.
• Research handbooks usually have knowledgeable editors
• Commercially published - some are gold, and some are garbage

Teach How Students Learn by Gene Tavernetti

This is the third conference I've been to with Gene, and I have had breakfast with him twice, but this is the first time I've gotten to attend his session, so I've been looking forward to it all day.  His book Teach Fast has been referenced by three other presenters today.

The instructional paradox:  Learning is complex! But we must simplify instruction.

FAST Framework:

Focused Adaptable Structured Teaching

Focused - Eliminating extraneous load

Adaptable - One lesson structure for all content areas

Structured - Follows the same order for each lesson

Preview - accessing prior knowledge from long term memory and/or provide relevance (relevance doesn't mean "to their lives." It means relevant to the lesson.

Learning Objective - deconstruct the standard into learner friendly language that is still academic, what is the new learning today? (Have students read it as a choral response)

Review - Sub skills necessary for the lesson in the same way they are about to use the information

Explain the Key Ideas - Definitions embedded in the context of the concepts, procedures, etc. This is the "what" of the lesson.

At this point, the fire alarm went off in the museum. We didn't leave, but it slowed us down significantly.

Explain Expert Thinking - This is the "how" of the lesson. (You should model two times. If there is only one, there is no pattern.)

Gradual Release of Responsibility - I do, we do, you do - You have already modeled 2 times. Then, they do it with your guidance and questions. Then, they can practice.

Closure 

Independent Practice

We remember best what we learn first and last. The bulk of instruction should be first.  Then, do inline practice in the middle of the lesson. Do a closure at the end to engage in retrieval practice at the end of the lesson.