How Do Teachers Get Their Information About How Students Learn?

By: Yana Weinstein & Oliver Caviglioli

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Teachers face the gargantuan task of integrating information from a myriad of sources in order to best help their students learn. But which sources are the most popular? We asked teachers on Twitter to participate in a poll; in 3 days, we received 181 responses. The question was simple: Where do you get your information about how students learn? Respondents were invited to select as many options as they liked, and suggest any additional sources we may have missed. This chart visualizes the percentage of teachers who indicated that they consulted each type of source.

Although we chose to represent the sources on a continuum from objective to subjective, two important points must be noted. First, the order of the sources on the continuum is itself subjective; and second, when teachers responded to the survey they saw the options presented in a randomized order without any reference to objectivity. Finally, the average number of sources an individual teacher selected was 8, indicating that teachers are clearly drawing from many different pools of information.