Author: Nola Jones

After child research conferences, there’s a certain irony: rooms full of adults discussing what kids need, how kids feel, and what kids can do, with hardly any kids present. This year, thousands of researchers, educators, and policy advocates are traveling to Poznań because of this tension, bringing with them an almost embarrassingly long-overdue question. Are we really paying attention to kids? not seeking their advice. not looking at them through the glass. truly paying attention. Without much input from kids themselves, the academic community has spent generations creating sophisticated frameworks around kids. Clinical observations, experimental controls, and parent-reported measures were…

One type of influence is one that doesn’t make an announcement. It rarely appears in conference keynotes, doesn’t trend on social media, and doesn’t receive breathless coverage in the tech press. It simply arrives in inboxes, typically on Tuesdays, and is read by those who truly influence the creation and dissemination of knowledge. That’s essentially how Elsevier’s Future Ready newsletter has been functioning, and it’s important to consider whether the academic community as a whole is paying enough attention. The focus of the April 2026 issue was the validity of science itself, which seems almost illogical for a major publishing…

Most parents will recognize this scene. A five-year-old is sitting at the kitchen table, lip trembling, staring at a worksheet about letter formation at 6:30 p.m. Dinner is on the stove, somewhere between warm and cold. The parent lingers, attempting to sound supportive. The youngster is worn out. They both don’t want to be there. As it happens, none of it may have been worthwhile in the first place. Teachers and parents are becoming increasingly uneasy due to a growing body of research showing that structured homework-style assignments given to kids before the age of six not only don’t improve…

On any given Tuesday morning, you might notice something in a well-funded Morris County school that would have seemed almost unreal ten years ago. Students are using real-time adaptive learning platforms that change the lesson on the spot and provide immediate feedback on a math concept a child is having trouble with. The instructor is close by, circling and posing more challenging questions rather than giving a lecture. The type of classroom is different. The contrast is startling in ways that are hard to describe when you drive forty minutes east into Newark or Paterson. Theoretically, the technology is also…

When you realize something has already happened—not is happening, not might happen, but has happened—and no one sent you a memo, a certain kind of helplessness sets in. That moment came quietly to an increasing number of parents in American school districts. A third-grader’s backpack contains a certificate. A fresh Chromebook that has a chatbot loaded and ready to go. A sixth-grader’s screen reads, “Help me write.” This emotion is captured in a recent article by Jessica Winter in The New Yorker with a remarkable level of candor. She doesn’t act impartial. She is not balanced. She compares the introduction…

A four-year-old is learning how to fold paper cranes in a classroom somewhere in Valencia. It may seem insignificant until you see the connection between that child and a worldwide movement that has been making the case—quietly at times, loudly at others—that early childhood experiences do not prepare children for formal education. It is authentic education. The core of what OMEP’s network of partners is currently doing throughout Spain and the larger Iberian Peninsula is this argument, which is steadfast, increasingly well-funded, and supported by decades of research. The World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP, was founded in…

A city where almost one in five citizens are either students or recent graduates has a subtle yet striking quality. You’ll notice it if you stroll through central Poznań on any given weekday morning: the coffee shops are packed early, the tram stops are packed with backpacks, and the sound of Polish blending with English, Vietnamese, and Arabic. It doesn’t feel like a traditional, cloistered university town. It seems as though the city has unconsciously arranged itself around the concept of education. Over 102,000 students attend 24 universities and colleges in Poznań today, with almost 8,000 of them coming from…

On a Tuesday morning, you notice a certain kind of silence as you pass a nature-based daycare. There are no cartoon jingles coming from the windows. Behind the glass, there is no blue glow. It was just children fighting over a stick in the backyard. It sounds almost archaic. That’s exactly the point. Early childhood education in the US is undergoing a gradual but noticeable change. Teachers, pediatric researchers, and parents are resisting the increasing normalization of screen time for young children by focusing on something much older, messier, and seemingly more productive: outdoor time. The movement behind it, known…

Most technological revolutions have a point at which engineering becomes uninteresting to non-engineers. The work that MIT researchers recently published about a compression technique called CompreSSM feels like one of those moments, not because it sounds glamorous but rather because of what it subtly makes possible for people who have nothing to do with control theory or state-space models. The fundamental concept sounds so counterintuitive that it is almost elegant. In the past, creating a smaller, less expensive AI model required either training a large one first and then reducing it, which was costly, time-consuming, and wasteful, or starting small…

One type of change is one that doesn’t make an announcement. Neither a press conference nor a rebranding campaign are included. It takes place in a conference room, most likely with lukewarm coffee, where a group of former clinical professionals who are now educators gather and discreetly reevaluate their methods. That’s essentially what has been happening within the doctorate program in occupational therapy at Duke University, and it’s something to be aware of. Perhaps surprisingly, the story begins with an operations manager. In addition to managing the day-to-day operations of Duke’s OTD program, Lindy Norman was pursuing a doctorate in…