Willingham: Close to a magic bullet in education
My guest today is cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” By Daniel Willingham No one talks about “magic bullets” in education, except to warn that something is not one. Recent work in social psychology may bring us as close to a magic bullet at we’re likely to get. The intervention concerns gender and achievement gaps, those groups of students who persistently perform worse than we would expect. For example, women represent only about 25% of the PhDs in the physical sciences. There’s no evidence that they are any less capable than men, but they earn worse grades in college physics courses, and thus are less competitive for spots in graduate school. Many are likely discouraged from even applying.
