The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2024

It was a big year for tech. Cell phones had their moment in the sun, and then just as suddenly fell from grace and began disappearing from classrooms nationwide. In their stead, a revolutionary new tool powered by large-language models arose in the West—Silicon Valley, to be precise—and began to write in fluid, human-sounding paragraphs.

In reading through hundreds of studies, we found a few good and bad things to say about the future of ChatGPT and AI in classrooms (Hint: the tools are still not ready to teach).

We also looked at whether there’s any truth to reports that “pandemic babies” lack basic skills like grasping a pencil or getting along with other kids; how to make your classroom management impervious to “inattention contagion”; and the price students pay when outdoor spaces are deemed “too risky” to learn in.

1. A Simple Tactic for Warm Demanders

We tend to measure academic success by the big wins: Passing a test with flying colors, for example, or earning top grades in a demanding course. But it’s the small wins that motivate students to keep going amid the inevitable academic struggles, a 2024 study showed.

Five hundred and seventy third and sixth graders were given 10 difficult math problems to solve, with half receiving an additional five problems that were appreciably easier—allowing students to experience a few bouts of success through the tangle of tough questions. 

Despite grappling with the same number of difficult problems, the students who were also given a handful of easy ones were twice as likely to look forward to solving another set of challenging problems. They were also twice as likely to rate the activity as enjoyable—a notable shift from the more typical feelings of frustration or discouragement that stem from arduous math. Placement mattered: Adding the questions at the beginning or end was the most beneficial, reflecting past research suggesting that our experiences of an event are colored by a strong opening or by ending on a high note, the researchers observed.

Warm demanders are teachers who insist on the highest standards but remain sensitive to a student’s need to belong—and to succeed. By bracketing the most frustrating lessons with work that elicits a child’s feelings of competence, teachers can “bolster students’ math motivation and engagement” in a way that does not “involve reducing the rigor of the material that students learn.”

2. Winning the Battle For Student Attention

Why are K–12 classrooms so hard to manage? Because there are dozens of egos at play; because students blurt things out or decide to toss a pen or take an unscripted walk; and because, according to a 2024 study, subtle social cues that hold classrooms together begin to fray—and spread quickly from desk to desk.

Researchers recruited 180 students and gave a handful a special mission: Take their assigned seats in a lecture hall and quietly sabotage the attention of classmates by slouching, looking bored, and failing to take notes. Like dominoes, students sitting next to malingerers began to lose focus—formerly attentive students struggled to pay attention, wrote about half as many pages of notes, and scored nine points lower on a follow-up quiz. “Inattention contagion,” the researchers explained, “is an ecologically valid phenomenon” and “may be particularly contagious” when students are seated next to inattentive peers.

The results build off a growing body of research demonstrating the infectious chaos wrought by more obvious distractions like fidget toys (2023), laptops (2020), and cell phones (2024).

Not every lesson lights up the room—there will be boredom. Your best chance to keep misbehavior and inattention at bay, according to experienced teachers, starts with thoughtful preparation: Make students accountable by co-creating classroom norms, set up clear classroom rules for transitions, audit your lesson instructions for clarity, design (and save!) engaging classroom materials, and consider strategic placement of chatty or daydreamy kids to keep everyone on task.

3. AI Vaporizes Long-TerM Learning

Boosters of AI chatbots in educational settings say the tools can assist in activities like brainstorming—or help students get started on tough math problems. But many teachers say their students lack the skills to improve upon what AI produces, or the maturity and self-awareness to know where the work of AI ends and their own responsibility begins.

A 2024 study of roughly 1,000 high school students put the matter to a literal test: Ninth, 10th, and 11th graders attended a brief math lesson, then practiced solving related problems in preparation for a quiz. Some students relied on traditional methods—sifting through their notes and textbooks to find possible answers—while others had access to a basic version of ChatGPT or to a special “tutor” package that had been developed with the help of classroom teachers.

The results were a triumph of technology—until they weren’t.

Students using the basic and tutor GPTs scored an astonishing 48 percent and 127 percent better than their peers during the practice sessions, respectively, but when the same students went to retrieve the information during a subsequent closed-book test—their math skills had gone up in smoke. Test performance of the students who had used the basic version of ChatGPT dropped so steeply that they scored 17 percent below their peers who had relied on pen and paper. Given the opportunity, students used the software as a “crutch” and often skipped straight to the answer, the researchers concluded. Deployed at critical junctures, the technology actually “runs the risk of inhibiting learning.”

But ChatGPT and its many siblings aren’t down for the count. In multiple studies, the tools performed well when designed to guide student learning—by refusing to give away answers, for example, or asking probing follow-up questions (see studies here, here, and here). AI is making rapid progress, but isn’t a threat to replace teachers. The software remains chained to the paradox of its origins: For now, at least, it’s only as smart as its human makers.

4. Take Your Proto-Biologists (and Poets) Outside

In the face of mounting academic pressure and “a general perception of the outdoors as risky,” schools have gradually reduced the amount of time students spend outside, researchers explained in a study published earlier this year. 

As a result, today’s young scientists-in-training may learn about flower pollination or how earthworms decompose soil without ever studying the organisms in the wild, while young poets write odes to natural phenomena from behind a desk—a detached, impersonal approach to learning that can dampen creativity, imagination, and a sense of wonder.

But outdoor activities like nature journaling—drawing trees and jotting down observations as they shed leaves, keeping a “moon journal” to track lunar phases, and generally being attentive to “the tiniest flowers in the grass and other bits of nature that usually go overlooked”—are cost-effective antidotes to our estrangement from nature, and can be aligned with state standards in subjects as diverse as art, science, social studies, and English, according to studies published in April 2023 and September 2024. 

For students from elementary school to college, a well-designed nature journaling activity can build crucial cognitive and processing skills like close observation, technical illustration, critical thinking, and expository and creative writing. Immersion in the natural world also appears to have significant psychological upside: fifth, sixth, and seventh graders who participated in nature journaling reported less stress, closer connections to their own emotions, and improved self-esteem, according to the September 2024 study.

5. Learning to Love Academic Mistakes

Nobody likes making mistakes; students often come to fear them. But when teachers in a 2024 study spent the lion’s share of their time focusing on their students’ mathematical errors—and engaging in collaborative discussions about common mistakes of logic or computation—teaching efficacy improved dramatically.

Researchers observed hundreds of eighth graders studying for a high-stakes algebra exam. Some students prepared for the big test by attending eight sessions of explicit math instruction; others spent the same amount of time shuttling between four practice “mini-tests” and four teacher-led sessions devoted to learning from answers students got wrong. While both groups of students improved their final exam scores by about the same amount, teachers in the “learning from errors” group had invested only half the time.

What made learning from errors so effective? Researchers hypothesized that teachers who dove “into the nature” of errors and worked collaboratively with students to determine “how to avert them in future” reaped the benefits of more student engagement and personal relevance. Teachers within this group who spoke “at” students rather than “with them” about how to overcome their errors fared considerably worse.

Embracing mistakes is a cultural signifier: It alters the climate of the classroom, deepens relationships, and improves student motivation, a separate 2024 study confirmed. Taken together, the new findings align with a larger body of research highlighting the value of ungraded practice tests followed by feedback—and provide support for teachers who seed their own work with mistakes, engage in group discussion of common errors, or make the time for playful classroom games like “find the best error.”

6. This Is Your Brain on Peer Pressure

In academic settings, a little social anxiety can be a good thing, according to a 2024 study that evaluated the effect of peer-to-peer teaching on students’ brain activity.

Ninety-nine university science students were recruited and fitted with futuristic caps studded with optical sensors capable of measuring neural engagement. The students were then given 10 minutes to digest a multimedia lesson about the Doppler effect before being randomly assigned to either reread the lesson, explain what they’d learned to a peer, or explain what they’d learned to themselves.

Students who taught a classmate reported elevated levels of anxiety and exhibited the highest levels of activity across the social and cognitive processing centers of the brain—but also significantly outperformed the restudy group on tests of recall and transfer, appeared to monitor their thinking more effectively, and included more “elaborative statements” and examples in their explanations. Researchers hypothesized that the presence of classmates may activate parts of the brain attuned to peer feedback, spurring kids to up their game and “adapt their explanations to the needs of the audience.”

To get the most out of teens, the research on peer-to-peer learning suggests, it’s best to mix direct instruction with group activities. Use simple strategies like “turn and talk” to break up lectures, assign students to teach classmates, gamify your quizzes to generate buzz, or ask kids to review each others’ first drafts before submitting papers.

7. Covid’s Long Tail

Sometimes, long after a serious accident has been cleared from a busy highway, cars still brake at the scene of the incident. The phenomenon—of lingering effects in the absence of a proximate cause—helps explain some of the recent findings on Covid-19 and education.

In a recent study published in Early Childhood Education Journal—years after the pandemic’s peak—nearly 80 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers reported that newly arriving students were performing “worse” or “much worse” than their pre-pandemic peers, and faced steep deficits in emotional regulation and literacy. By the summer of 2024, The New York Times had picked up the story, writing that dozens of teachers, pediatricians, and other experts were alarmed by a new generation of “pandemic babies” who were “less likely to be able to hold a pencil, communicate their needs, identify shapes and letters, manage their emotions, or solve problems with peers.”

Similar patterns emerge in the upper grades. A 2024 research report noted that math scores had not returned to pre-pandemic levels for any grades from first through eighth, and college readiness among high school seniors has plummeted to “a three-decade low.” A 2024 report from RAND, meanwhile, tracked “persistently high chronic absentee rates” in the aftermath of the pandemic, and revealed that many district leaders believed that a permanent “cultural shift has occurred.”

School systems may be forced to make commensurate changes. For early childhood teachers, that could mean more focus on classroom routines and student self-regulation, while district leaders interviewed by RAND suggest that chronic absenteeism may “not improve without new approaches to make school more engaging.”

8. The Impulse to Overprotect ELLs

Well-meaning schools often dissuade English language learners from taking science and social studies courses until they’re fluent in English, assuming that remedial language instruction is a necessary first step. But a 2024 study suggests that’s usually the wrong approach.

Researchers observed thousands of first and second grade ELLs and their English-proficient peers as they moved through a 10-week literacy program built around science and social studies lessons. Instruction focused on interactive read-alouds of informational texts with an emphasis on target vocabulary, peer discussions, and structured writing tasks that pushed ELLs to deploy their new language skills and conceptual understanding. 

ELLs who stuck around, collaborated with “linguistically diverse peers,” and took on challenging work won the day, outperforming ELLs who had been removed for remediation in tests of domain-specific vocabulary knowledge and argumentative writing. The findings, the researchers say, challenge the conventional wisdom about delaying immersion and argue that ELLs should “actively participate in rich content, informational texts, and collaborative activities” with their peers.

9. A Modest Mental Health Turnaround

For nearly a decade, the erosion of teen mental health showed no signs of slowing. As the years ticked by, more and more students struggled with despair, turbulent thoughts, and suicide—enough to force the American Academy of Pediatrics to declare a national emergency.

But the latest CDC data suggests that we may finally be reaching a turning point. After a prolonged rise in the percentage of students feeling persistently sad or hopeless—peaking at 42 percent in 2021, an alarming 12-point increase since 2013—that number modestly ticked back down to 40 percent in 2023. The CDC documented similar trends with suicidal thoughts—a gradual 5-point rise followed by a sharp 2-point drop—and suicide attempts, which rose 2 points before dropping 1 last year.

Despite the positive signs, three in 10 high school students still struggle with poor mental health, with female, Native American, and LGBTQ teens faring worse than their peers. “There's still much work ahead," says Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health.

There’s reason to believe the new trendline may persist. “Schools are the main delivery sites for youth mental health services,” according to a 2024 study, and in recent years they have mobilized nearly a billion dollars of Covid relief funding to hire additional counselors while connecting students to hospitals and clinics—key strategies that represent “progress we can build on,” suggests Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer.

10. The ‘Science of Reading’ Meets Real Children

With the proliferation of new state regulations mandating evidence-based reading instruction—in 2024 alone, 25 states introduced ‘Science of Reading’ bills, bringing the total number of states to 38—districts are scrambling to comply. 

But there’s a real risk of overcorrecting or oversimplifying, emerging research suggests. Foundational reading skills like phonemic awareness, for example, play a crucial role in helping students learn how to read, but not every child needs the same amount of help. 

In a 2024 analysis of 16 studies on early phonemic awareness instruction, researchers from Texas A&M discovered an “optimal cumulative dosage” of 10.2 hours, a finding that held for students at risk for reading disabilities, while cautioning that “our findings should not be used to dictate an oversimplified prescription regarding dosage.” More isn’t always better—and overemphasizing parts of any reading program can result in a “suboptimal allocation of time and financial resources for promoting reading achievement.”

Some reading experts take the long view. “The science of reading is not settled,” the prominent scholars of literacy Robert Tierney and P. David Pearson wrote in a 2024 report, noting that “phonics-first approaches were lively and controversial matters” as far back as the 1960s. 

In the decades since, claims of a reading crisis have routinely surfaced in an effort to “justify a purging of past practices." But phonics is just one crucial piece of the reading puzzle—a skill which must eventually be applied to authentic reading materials such as books and short stories, as “a regular part of the reading diet” that involves more advanced skills like vocabulary development and concept knowledge, write literacy experts Nell K. Duke and Heidi Anne E. Mesmer. 

In the end, of course, reading instruction is about getting real reading results for real students—and that’s a complicated matter indeed. According to kindergarten teacher Margaret R., who left a comment on Edutopia’s website in August of this year, “I always had a kiddo or two that came in as a reader,” and another “who never heard a story or held a book. It is my job to design instruction that moves both children forward.”