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ResearchED held its first Midwest gathering at a public high school near St. Louis, bringing 160 educators together for a one-day conference on learning science. The event reflects the group’s effort to spread research-informed teaching practices in the United States, where organizers say adoption has lagged behind Britain and Australia.
ResearchED held its first Midwest conference at a public high school near St. Louis, bringing 160 educators together for a one-day program on how research into memory, attention and practice can inform classroom teaching. The gathering marks another step in the organization’s effort to establish its teacher-led events in the United States, where organizers say learning-science ideas have not taken hold as broadly as they have in Britain.
The St. Louis event featured about 40 sessions, according to The 74’s report, and was organized around practical teaching methods rather than technology or political debate. British teacher, author and consultant Tom Sherrington delivered the keynote, using a model geography lesson to illustrate memorization, discussion and repetition. The subject matter was secondary to the teaching techniques, he told attendees.
“We don’t need to do new stuff,” Sherrington said. “We need to do the things we know really, really well.” He urged teachers to take responsibility for engaging every student, saying it was their “solemn duty” to get every child participating. Sherrington, who the report says has attended 53 ResearchED events, described the conference as evidence that cognitive-science principles “are not niche ideas.”
ResearchED’s reach is international, but individual events remain small. The St. Louis gathering had 160 attendees, and the report identified Toronto, Doha and Haninge, Sweden, as the locations of the next three events. The source does not provide attendance figures for those conferences or a total for the organization’s events worldwide.
A U.S. foothold for learning science
The conference gives teachers in the St. Louis region access to sessions about how students learn and how classroom routines can reflect that research. The focus is on applying ideas such as retrieval, attention and repeated practice to everyday instruction, rather than presenting learning science as an abstract academic subject.
That effort matters because the report describes a gap between the United States and countries where these ideas have been more firmly incorporated into teacher training and education policy. Helen Reynolds, a British physics teacher based in Tucson, said she saw no comparable U.S. “mechanisms for improvement.” Her assessment is an attributed view, not a measure of practice across every U.S. school or district.
For teachers and school leaders, the event’s small scale also points to the challenge ahead: a conference can introduce evidence and teaching approaches, but the report does not establish whether attendees will adopt them or whether student outcomes will change.
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From teacher blogs to international events
ResearchED began amid an online discussion among British teachers in 2012 about why teacher-preparation programs had not taught them more about how learning works. Tom Bennett, a London teacher dissatisfied with what he saw as unproven educational fads, joined fellow teacher Hélène Galdin-O’Shea to organize the first event at Dulwich College in south London in September 2013.
Sherrington recalled that about 30 people presented at the first gathering and that organizers initially expected it to be a one-off. In a later blog post, he wrote that it “felt like the start of something.” Further events followed, and local organizers began holding conferences under the ResearchED name. The report says events are now common across England, with international gatherings also taking place.
The report describes a contrast between the United States’ role in foundational cognitive-science research and the stronger policy and teacher-training uptake of these ideas in England. It also says early-2010s policy changes and a framework for training early-career teachers helped bring learning science into the British mainstream. Those points provide context for the U.S. events, but do not by themselves establish how every school system uses the research.
““We don’t need to do new stuff. We need to do the things we know really, really well.””
— Tom Sherrington, keynote speaker and former teacher
The reach beyond one Saturday
The report does not specify the conference’s exact date, provide a full list of speakers, or say how many of the 160 attendees were local teachers. It also does not report post-event plans for teacher training, school implementation or follow-up measurement.
Claims about the United States being “10 years behind” England and Australia come from Mercanti-Anthony and are not accompanied in the report by a comparative dataset. The article also offers no evidence that attending ResearchED events causes changes in classroom practice or student achievement. The scale of the organization’s U.S. network and the pace of future expansion remain unclear.
Upcoming events and local follow-through
The next three ResearchED events named in the report are scheduled for Toronto, Doha and Haninge. Their dates, programs and attendance targets are not provided. The St. Louis conference’s longer-term effect will depend on whether participants carry the methods discussed into their schools and whether local organizers hold further events.
For now, the confirmed development is a first Midwest gathering under the ResearchED banner, not a broader policy shift. Further reporting would be needed to establish whether the conference leads to sustained professional learning or measurable changes in teaching.
Key Questions
What is ResearchED?
ResearchED is an international series of educator-organized conferences focused on research-informed teaching and how learning works. Its events began in England in 2013.
What happened near St. Louis?
A public high school near St. Louis hosted ResearchED’s first Midwest conference. The one-day event drew 160 attendees and included about 40 sessions, according to The 74.
What does learning science mean in this report?
The report uses the term for research on memory, attention and practice, and how evidence about those processes can inform teaching.
Did the conference show that student outcomes improved?
No such outcome data is reported. The article describes the conference and its teaching ideas but does not assess changes in classroom practice or student achievement.
Source: the74million.org
