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Sam Sims

@drsamsims.bsky.social
3.4K followers 2.4K following 116 posts

Associate Prof of Education, UCL Research Lead, Ambition Institute Site: samsims.education

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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
New: we go back to basics on why we run experiments in education Reflecting on 20+ years of data, we argue that some common advice for how and when to use experiments should be revised Was fun working on this with a great team. Reviewers also really helped us sharpen the argument.
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Jake Anders @jakeanders.uk · 04/07/2026
New article: Experimental education research: rethinking why, how, and when to use random assignment Out today (even though it’s Saturday): doi.org/10.1080/1380... With @drsamsims.bsky.social @mjinglis.bsky.social @benweidmann.bsky.social @benstyles.bsky.social & Hugues Lortie-Forgues
doi.org
Experimental education research: rethinking why, how, and when to use random assignment
Over the last twenty years, education researchers have increasingly conducted randomized experiments. Such experiments are usually designed in the hope of supporting comparisons of cost effectivene...
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Eleonora Alabrese @eleala.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
🧵 New working paper out today: "Measuring the Regional Economic Cost of Brexit: Evidence as of 2026" with @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social @trfetzer.com & Shizhuo Wang Here's what the data say about who paid the price in these 10 years from the referendum 1/…
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UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
🚨🚨 4 weeks to go until the 2026 CEPEO #annyleccy! 🚨🚨 Prof. Jacob is going to tell us what happened when schools banned phones in the US -- just as a widespread ban (probably) comes into force in the UK. Sign up at the link below!
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
New research from Michigan State shows a) school climate has a pretty strong relationship with pupil absenteeism b) this seems to have got stronger since pandemic c) student sense of 'connectedness' may be particularly important aspect of school climate journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Are you a post-doc social scientist with strong quantitative skills? Would you like to come and work with myself and @clairetyler.bsky.social alongside all the brilliant people at @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social? If so, please apply for this job! Please repost! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQK316/p...
jobs.ac.uk
Post-Doctoral Research Assistant at UCL
An academic position as a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional academic job opportunities.
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Some perspective: The S&P opened down -1.3% on Trump's Greenland saber-rattling. That's $750 billion of wealth destroyed -- roughly equal to estimates of the value of Greenland. And so ~in dollar terms~ his shenanigans have already cost the US one Greenland, and we've got nothing to show for it.
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UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
In our latest CEPEO Working Paper, @drsamsims.bsky.social studies the effects of an intervention to improve A level physics uptake among female students by countering gender stereotypes. Read the results here: econpapers.repec.org/paper/uclcep...
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Shayan Sardarizadeh @shayan86.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
THREAD: I'll fact-check all the viral misinformation about the US military operation in Venezuela in this thread This image, purporting to show the US military arresting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, is AI-generated. According to Google's SynthID detector, it was created using Google AI.
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Many students - and indeed adults - underrate themselves when it comes to maths. So what do we know about teaching for confidence in mathematics? www.ambition.org.uk/blog/five-in...
ambition.org.uk
Five insights on teaching for confidence in mathematics
What can teachers of maths do to help more pupils feel confident? Research lead Dr Sam Sims and maths expert Emma Lark share five useful things the research says about confidence in mathematics, and s...
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UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
CEPEO colleague @drsamsims.bsky.social has co-authored a new book chapter on effective teacher training. Access it for free here: livehandbook.org/k-12-educati...
livehandbook.org
Teacher Professional Development: Costs, Benefits and Policy
Explore teacher evaluation methods, incentives, and their impact on student outcomes. Learn how performance measures drive teacher behavior and skills.
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
New research with @clareroutledge.bsky.social Funded by the Gatsby Foundation We asked 2000 UK/US undergrads to choose between pairs of hypothetical jobs to understand how more of them could be tempted into teaching
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
New research with @clareroutledge.bsky.social Funded by the Gatsby Foundation We asked 2000 UK/US undergrads to choose between pairs of hypothetical jobs to understand how more of them could be tempted into teaching
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
edworkingpapers.com/sites/defaul...
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Do you like the kind of research that we do at @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social? 📈 Do you want to learn more about education policy and analysis? 🏫 Then why not come and do our new MSc this September? 🧑‍🎓 Be warned - the module on teachers and teaching will be taught by me! www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-...
ucl.ac.uk
Social Policy (Quantitative Education Analysis) MSc
The Social Policy (Quantitative Education Analysis) MSc is designed to help students understand and conduct rigorous research addressing challenges relating to education policy and educational inequalities in a wide variety of professional contexts. The relationship between robust research and evidence-based policy is a key course theme.
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UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
We broadly welcome the recommendations of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, in particular citing CEPEO’s briefing note on the value of GCSEs (econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:ce...) and...
econpapers.repec.org
EconPapers: Should we abolish GCSEs?
By Gill Wyness; Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting disruption to schooling led to the Government cancelling GCSE and A level exams in
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
More large-scale survey evidence that many students are becoming disengaged from education when they enter secondary school. This time from collaborators of mine at @liftschools.org www.liftschools.org/ks3-engagement
liftschools.org
KS3 Engagement Report - Lift Schools
Our survey of 21,000 pupils found a stark drop in belonging from Year 6 to Year 9. We explore why student engagement dips in Key Stage 3. Read our full report.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
Elon Musk's involvement in politics really hurt Tesla sales. "Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles."
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BK. Titanji @boghuma.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
Finally read the paper and it's worth the buzz. mRNA vaccines saved 20 million lives in a global pandemic and the technology is opening up new avenues for the treatment of deadly cancers. This is really one of the most impactful scientific developments of our time. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint blockade - Nature
mRNA vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2 also sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint inhibitors.
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Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
To be clear: deportations to increase cultural homogeneity is the text book definition of ethnic cleansing. Demands that come even close to this are so far outside any democratic norm and the rule of law. What has happened to a country when this is not condemned in the strongest possible terms?
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Very sensible. Indeed it would be mad if the government didn’t do it the way Daisy proposes.
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
Joel Mokyr won the Nobel prize today Here is what I think he can teach us about improving schools: samsims.education/2022/06/08/e...
samsims.education
Evidence, expertise, and the self-improving school system
(9 minute read) Rob Coe used his 2013 inaugural lecture at Durham to survey the evidence on long-run change in the performance of the English school system. He concluded that standards had not impr…
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
All teacher training ultimately aims to support transfer of learning to new and varied classroom situations. In this (recently published) paper we provide some of the first experimental evidence on how teacher educators can help achieve this goal: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Decomposition and recomposition: effects on early-career teachers’ enactment and adaptive transfer of behaviour management practices
Breaking down sequences of teaching into constituent practices is thought to make learning to teach more manageable. However, it also divorces teaching practices from context, which risks leaving t...
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Sam Bowman @sambowman.co · 17/09/2025
Works in Progress is now available as a print magazine. I think it's the most beautiful and readable magazine I've ever seen. Subscribe today for $100/£75 to receive six beautiful, 120-page issues a year. worksinprogress.co/print
worksinprogress.co
Print - Works in Progress Magazine
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
How can democrats justify continuing to fund an authoritarian takeover of the federal government? open.spotify.com/episode/5kpn...
open.spotify.com
If Democrats Have a Better Plan, I’d Like to Hear It
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Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte @turnbulldugarte.com · 05/09/2025
Radical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...
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John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.
bbc.co.uk
Melvyn Bragg decides to step down from presenting In Our Time
After 26 years on the programme, the legendary presenter bids farewell to the series
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Are you interested in teacher coaching, simulation, transfer of training? Join us at 11am (online) for this talk on Thursday. Sign up using the link below: ucl.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
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Dan Willingham @dtwuva.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
Across subjects and grades (6th-college) prequestions improve learning--new evidence from real classrooms (open) psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
The @theeef.bsky.social recommends schools use teaching assistants (TAs) to deliver evidence-based interventions This research, led by my colleague Briony Banks, sets out the options and provides advice for school leaders on how to choose between them www.ambition.org.uk/teaching-ass...
ambition.org.uk
A review of evidence-based teaching-assistant-led interventions
Our latest research helps you to improve the impact that teaching assistants have on pupils’ academic outcomes. Download to discover the most effective teaching-assistant-led interventions.
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Teachers who made more/better use of classroom routines had students with measurably higher (indicators of) attention in their lesson www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Why do students exhibit different attention-related behavior during instruction? Investigating effects of individual and context-dependent determinants
To determine the success of their instruction, teachers need to rely on observable cues in students' behavior. However, students exhibit different att…
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Climate models since the 1970s nailed it—most predicted global warming almost exactly as it happened.
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
New meta-analysis of expertise reversal effect: lower prior knowledge learn more from higher instructional guidance; higher prior knowledge learn less Differences in effects of guidance for low-high knowledge groups (60 studies) supports theory: Tetzlaff et al www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
I am generally a big fan of the BBC - but this is a truly terrible 'both sides' *push notification* to send out to people in this country about this news event
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UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
How should we train new teachers? New research from @drsamsims.bsky.social suggests breaking teaching sequences into parts, then recomposing them in new contexts, helps teachers adapt better than learning whole sequences from the start. Read more here: 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Decomposition and recomposition: effects on early-career teachers’ enactment and adaptive transfer of behaviour management practices
Breaking down sequences of teaching into constituent practices is thought to make learning to teach more manageable. However, it also divorces teaching practices from context, which risks leaving t...
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Hi Bluesky 👋🏻 Is there anyone out there who a) knows how to write basic C++ scripts and b) might be interested in joining a research project looking at behaviour/attention in the classroom? Estimated two days of work in total. You would be a coauthor on the paper. Please do get in touch!
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
“Flooding the zone” is designed to overwhelm the ability of traditional media and citizens to keep track of the intentional slide into authoritarianism. This website uses data to track it all:
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Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
🧵Introducing the Trump Action Tracker website! Today I’m launching www.trumpactiontracker.info - a live, searchable list of authoritarian‑style actions from Trump’s second term (over 740 actions so far). 1/14
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Adam Robbins @mrarobbins.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Last time I will share one of these quotes for Unlocking Teacher Development. I've been blown away by the support and unexpected success of my little self-published book. Here's what a proper smart person who thinks about teacher development as a job thinks: Thanks @drsamsims.bsky.social
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
This paper by Ludewig et al shows that quite a lot of the 2016-2021 PIRLs country score changes can be accounted for by changes in the home learning environment and duration of school closures during the pandemic www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Reading literacy decline in Europe: Disentangling school closures and out-of-school learning conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic
This study examines the decline in average reading literacy among elementary school students in European countries between 2016 and 2021, as documente…
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Edgar Dubourg @edgardubourg.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
We often have to judge who is knowledgeable—precisely when we are not. Can humans really do that? Our new paper in Psychological Science shows that, surprisingly, we can. drive.google.com/file/d/1b15E...
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Roll up, roll up! This will be a fascinating talk. And there’s wine and discussion afterwards
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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Strong FT editorial on much of the world’s shameful silence on Gaza, even as Netanyahu threatens to escalate Israel’s offensive. on.ft.com/433Mp02
This would be a disaster for 2.2mn Gazans who have already endured unfathomable suffering. Each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land. For two months, Israel has blocked delivery of all aid into the strip. Child malnutrition rates are rising, the few functioning hospitals are running out of medicine, and warnings of starvation and disease are growing louder.

Yet the US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.Israel has briefed that the expanded operation would not begin until after Trump’s visit to the Gulf next week, saying there is a “window” for Hamas to release hostages in return for a temporary truce. Arab leaders are infuriated by Netanyahu’s relentless pursuit of conflict in Gaza yet they will fete Trump at lavish ceremonies with promises of multibillion-dollar investments and arms deals.

Trump will put the onus on Hamas when speaking to his Gulf hosts. The group’s murderous October 7 attack is what triggered the Israeli offensive. Gulf states agree that its continued stranglehold on Gaza is a factor prolonging the war. But they must stand up to Trump and convince him to pressure Netanyahu to end the killing, lift the siege and return to talks.

The global tumult triggered by Trump has already distracted attention from the catastrophe in Gaza. Yet the longer it goes on, the more those who remain silent or cowed from speaking out will be complicit.
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Interesting proposals for (affordable) reforms of teacher professional development in England from @ippr.bsky.social and @ambitioninstitute.bsky.social 👀 ippr-org.files.svdcdn.com/production/D...
ippr-org.files.svdcdn.com
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Primary educators 👋🏻 I am interviewing teachers for a research project aimed at understanding how teachers learn from each other in the workplace. But my sample is currently very secondary heavy Could you (please!) spare me an hour of your time this week or next? It will be interesting, I promise!
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Tens of millions of pounds for a ditch. The UK planning system is a farce.
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
I had been doubtful that we were going to have a "this is the crisis moment" with Trump, as opposed to "everything about this is a destructive catastrophe." But the Abrego Garcia case is the crisis moment. 1/
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Sam Sims @drsamsims.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
🔥
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