Education & Learning News

May 3, 2025

Top Headlines

Missed School Is an Overlooked Consequence of Tropical Cyclones, Warming Planet

Apr. 29, 2025 — New research finds that tropical cyclones reduce years of schooling for children in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in areas unaccustomed to frequent storms. Girls are ...

Essay Challenge: ChatGPT Vs Students

Apr. 30, 2025 — Researchers have been putting ChatGPT essays to the test against real students. A new study reveals that the AI generated essays don't yet live up to the efforts of real students. While the AI essays were found to be impressively coherent and ...

Children's Reading and Writing Develop Better When They Are Trained in Handwriting

Apr. 30, 2025 — Researchers explored how manual and keyboard practice influenced children's abilities in their reading and writing learning process. 5-year-olds were taught an artificial alphabet using different ...

Synchrotron in a Closet: Bringing Powerful 3D X-Ray Microscopy to Smaller Labs

Apr. 29, 2025 — For the first time, researchers can study the microstructures inside metals, ceramics and rocks with X-rays in a standard laboratory without needing to travel to a particle accelerator, according to ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:57pm EDT

Using Humor in Communication Helps Scientists Connect, Build Trust

Apr. 28, 2025 — Scientists aren't comedians, but it turns out a joke or two can go a long way. That's according to a new study that found when researchers use humor in their communication -- particularly online -- ...

Temporary Anxiety Impacts Learning

Apr. 22, 2025 — Researchers found that a brief episode of anxiety may have a bigger influence on a person's ability to learn what is safe and what is not. A new study used a virtual reality game that involved ...

Global Survey Highlights the Challenges of VR-Haptic Technology in Dental Education

Apr. 25, 2025 — A recent global survey of 156 institutions reveals strong interest in VR-haptic technology for dental training, yet significant barriers impede ...

What Happens in the Brain When Your Mind Blanks

Apr. 24, 2025 — Mind blanking is a common experience with a wide variety of definitions ranging from feeling 'drowsy' to 'a complete absence of conscious awareness.' Neuroscientists and philosophers compile what we ...

By 15 Months, Infants Begin to Learn New Words for Objects, Even Those They've Never Seen

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study by developmental scientists offers the first evidence that infants as young as 15 months can identify an object they have learned about ...

Using ChatGPT, Students Might Pass a Course, but With a Cost

Apr. 22, 2025 — With the assumption that students are going to use artificial intelligence and large language models such as ChatGPT to do their homework, researchers set out to learn how well the free version of ...

Adolescents Who Sleep Longer Perform Better at Cognitive Tasks

Apr. 22, 2025 — Adolescents who sleep for longer -- and from an earlier bedtime -- than their peers tend to have improved brain function and perform better at cognitive tests, researchers have shown. But the study ...

Study Shows Addressing Working Memory Can Help Students With Math Difficulty Improve Word Problem-Solving Skills

Apr. 21, 2025 — Working memory is like a mental chalkboard we use to store temporary information while executing other tasks. Scientists worked with more than 200 ...

Novel Treatment Approach for Language Disorder Shows Promise

Apr. 21, 2025 — Neuroscientists have developed a new treatment approach for a language disorder that combines traditional speech therapy with noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain. Brain stimulation helped ...

Father's Mental Health Can Impact Children for Years

Apr. 19, 2025 — Five-year-olds exposed to paternal depression are more likely to have behavioral issues in grade school, researchers ...

The Brain Learns to Filter out Distracting Stimuli Over Time

Apr. 15, 2025 — The human brain can learn through experience to filter out disturbing and distracting stimuli -- such as a glaring roadside billboard or a flashing banner on the internet. Scientists have used ...

New Study Finds Surprising Way to Curb College-Aged Drinking Harms -- Without Cutting Alcohol

Apr. 14, 2025 — Researchers have developed and tested an intervention called Counter-Attitudinal Advocacy and compared it to to the well-established Personalized Normative Feedback (PNF) to evaluate their ...

School-Based Asthma Therapy Improves Student Health, Lowers Medical Costs

Apr. 11, 2025 — Millions of U.S. children have asthma and benefit from taking anti-inflammatory medications at least once a day as prescribed by their health care provider. This school-based asthma therapy program ...

Unsafe Driving During School Drop Offs at 'Unacceptable' Levels

Apr. 10, 2025 — Risky driving by parents and other motorists who do the school run is putting children in danger, according to a new ...

AI Threats in Software Development Revealed

Apr. 8, 2025 — Researchers completed one of the most comprehensive studies to date on the risks of using AI models to develop software. In a paper, they demonstrate how a specific type of error could pose a serious ...

Early Education Impacts Teenage Behavior

Apr. 8, 2025 — Researchers explored the long-term effects of preschool expansion in Japan in the 1960s, revealing significant reductions in risky behaviors amongst teenagers. By analyzing regional differences in ...

Childhood Experiences Shape the Brain's White Matter With Cognitive Effects Seen Years Later

Apr. 7, 2025 — Investigators have linked difficult early life experiences with reduced quality and quantity of the white matter communication highways throughout the adolescent brain. This reduced connectivity is ...

Does Teamwork Fulfill the Goal of Project-Based Learning?

Apr. 7, 2025 — A researcher investigated the impact of the group work environment on motivation in English as a second language classes. The study revealed that the group work environment plays an important role in ...

Fear of Rejection Influences How Children Conform to Peers

Apr. 4, 2025 — The fear of rejection -- familiar to many children and adults -- can significantly impact how kids behave in their peer groups, according to new ...

Common Phrases, Not Fancy Words, Make You Sound More Fluent in a Foreign Language

Apr. 3, 2025 — Fluency in a foreign language is often thought to be about speaking quickly and using advanced vocabulary. However, researchers reveal that speakers who use common, everyday expressions sound more ...

Science 'Storytelling' Urgently Needed Amid Climate and Biodiversity Crisis

Apr. 2, 2025 — Scientists should experiment with creative ways of communicating their work to inspire action to protect the natural world, researchers ...

Classroom Talk Plays a Key Part in the Teaching of Writing

Mar. 27, 2025 — The way teachers manage classroom discussion with pupils plays a key role in the teaching of writing, a new study ...

We Must Not Ignore Eugenics in Our Genetics Curriculum, Says Professor

Mar. 27, 2025 — To encourage scientists to speak up when people misuse science to serve political agendas, biology professor Mark Peifer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argues that eugenics should ...

A Hit of Dopamine Tells Baby Birds When Their Song Practice Is Paying Off

Mar. 25, 2025 — By watching the ebb and flow of the brain's chemical signals, researchers are beginning to disentangle the molecular mechanisms underlying the intrinsic motivation to learn. In a new study of ...

Teaching Kids About Bugs Benefits the Environment

Mar. 24, 2025 — Pro-environmental behavior increases among school students who participate in insect-related citizen science projects, according to new ...

A Simple Way to Boost Math Progress

Mar. 24, 2025 — Scientists investigated whether email interventions informed by behavioral science could help teachers help students learn ...

How the Brain Links Related Memories Formed Close in Time

Mar. 21, 2025 — If you've ever noticed how memories from the same day seem connected while events from weeks apart feel separate, a new study reveals the reason: Our brains physically link memories that occur ...

Brain Imaging Reveals Surprises About Learning

Mar. 19, 2025 — By revealing for the first time what happens in the brain when an animal makes a mistake, researchers are shedding light on the holy grail of neuroscience: the mechanics of how we learn. The team ...

Mastery of Language Could Predict Longevity

Mar. 18, 2025 — A recent study has linked longevity specifically to verbal fluency, the measure of one's vocabulary and ability to use ...

More Than Marks: How Wellbeing Shapes Academic Success

Mar. 11, 2025 — A world first* study of more than 215,000 students, researchers found that while standardized tests measure academic skills, different dimensions of wellbeing -- emotional wellbeing, engagement, and ...