The communication of scientific findings to the broader public is a noble, but often fraught goal. Scientific progress comes in fits and spurts, with meanings rarely understandable in the moment they occur. As a result of this uncertainty, it is often difficult to know how to place a single study or even a series of studies into the broader context.

In education, the issue of over-eager science communication is impossible to escape. The rise and subsequent downfall of “novel” findings from psychology in the classroom is commonplace. From the Pygmalion effect, to learning styles, to socio-emotional learning, it seems that education is on an approximately ten-year cycle where a new idea becomes trendy, becomes the pedagogical talking point of the day, is hastily incorporated into classrooms, and then disappears slowly without much substantive change effected at the end of it all. This pattern is so predictable that it has been deemed the “educational hype cycle.” More broadly, these sorts of difficulties with over-eager science communication have even led some researchers to proclaim themselves “against public engagement,” thinking it better to be too slow to communicate the science than too fast.

Why does cognitive research fail to influence the school system?

Conversely, there are several bodies of research that have been developed over the decades out of educational and cognitive psychology that seem never to gain any traction in the broader world. For example, in 1988, Frank Dempster wrote an article titled “The spacing effect: A case study in the failure to apply the results of psychological research”—where perhaps not surprisingly—he noted that the spacing effect is one of the most robust findings in cognitive psychology, and yet very little instructional materials or educational schedules leverage spacing to increase the durability of students’ learning.

To this day, the spacing effect and related research on interleaving, retrieval practice, cognitive load, and multimedia learning are relatively infrequently mentioned as ways of improving schools compared to the theories I mentioned earlier. I would wager that the average American teacher is much more likely to be aware of learning styles than the spacing effect. But whereas the spacing effect has stood the test of time since Ebbinghaus’s work in the late 1800s, the evidence for matching pedagogy to learning styles is less than compelling.

Given the long history of empirical support and clear opportunities for improving learning outcomes, why is it so difficult to put findings from cognitive science, such as the spacing effect, into educational practice? Dempster noted nine possible reasons why the spacing effect had not caught on in schools, ranging from “The [Spacing Effect] Has Not Been Known Long Enough” to “Too Many Studies Using School-Like Activities Have Failed to Show the Spacing Effect.” He dismissed each of these reasons in turn, suggesting that they were insufficient to explain the lack of adoption of the spacing effect into educational practice.

Here, I want to focus on one of the nine reasons that I believe Dempster may have given too little attention and dismissed too readily. Specifically, I am referring to the reason titled “The [Spacing Effect] Cannot Be Linked to Issues of Current Concern to Educators.” Dempster did not find this hypothesis to be very convincing and gave this point the least consideration of all nine potential reasons.

It’s a matter of values and incentives, not just a lack of information

I am not certain that Dempster’s evaluation was entirely accurate. Whereas the other eight reasons he presented centered on enhancing the scientific research to present a more compelling case to educators, recent advancements in the field of science communication suggest that communication breakdowns in science often stem not only from a lack of scientific knowledge or comprehension but also from inherent clashes of values.

In other words, older theories of scientific communication are often called deficit theories because they focus on knowledge deficits as the underlying cause of science communication issues. For example, the deficit theorist would argue that the main reason people are hesitant to change their lifestyle to prevent climate change is because they do not understand the potentially disastrous effects of extreme weather events, rising temperatures, and so on.

Conversely, recent theories of science communication argue that information deficits are rarely the entire story when it comes to changing people’s minds in socially and politically complex areas of science. Laypeople bring their own schemas, background knowledge, and values to scientific conversations. In other words, is it a lack of knowledge preventing people from taking climate change seriously, or is it because the required actions to prevent climate change would unduly impact the standards of living that they are accustomed to?

More recent work in science communication has emphasized dialogue rather than deficits, and the need to better understand where non-scientists are coming from. Perhaps ironically, one academic sums up with an article titled “It’s Time for Scientists to Stop Explaining So Much.”

To explain the failure of the spacing effect as an object of science communication, one might want to look at a case study of a “successfully” adopted psychological theory. In a recent paper, I did just that, turning to a theory from educational psychology that most definitely has had substantial impact on the public discourse in education: growth mindset. First put forward in the 1980s, growth mindset is the theory that believing one’s intelligence can change is a powerful motivator for academic achievement. This theory is commonplace in American schools, and some argue it has had too much impact.

I hypothesized that growth mindset coincides with many of the professional commitments that educators find valuable. Put differently, growth mindset feels intuitively right. Indeed, a close reading of qualitative and survey-based research seems to indicate that growth mindset comports with the practices teachers are already doing. “Growth mindset” is partially successful because it gives educators a word for the type of pedagogy they already hope to perform.

Unfortunately, this massive uptake of growth mindset into the wider world outside of academia has come with negative side effects. For one, the public understanding of growth mindset deviates from the theory as originally postulated and currently tested in large-scale field trials. As a result, the benefits of growth mindset are often overestimated compared to the relatively modest results shown in the empirical literature, potentially crowding out other, more effective interventions. And growth mindset is often conflated with broader pedagogical orientations that are not actually implicated in the research on growth mindset. Second, there are fears that this hype cycle tends to further decrease trust in psychological approaches to improving education. Over time, teachers may become aware of the “flavor of the day” nature of many psychological interventions, and thus are less likely to take any future educational applications of social science research seriously.

Lessons from the case of growth mindset

What can we take from the example of growth mindset and other widespread psychological constructs that did cross the barrier into the collective conscious? Perhaps unintuitively—even to those of us trained as scientists of human cognition—it may not necessarily be the strength of our science holding back larger adoption into the social conscious (whether in public policy, education, or otherwise). The existence and meaningfulness of the effects of growth mindset are much more strongly contested within the psychology literature than the spacing effect ever has been. Indeed, cognitive psychologists have been investigating means of improving memory for over one hundred years, and still, our research often fails to find itself into the broader conversation. Given this lack of uptake of our findings, we likely need to go beyond deficit theories of science communication. 

Rather, what makes for good science communication often means understanding why and when an audience may or may not be receptive to the ideas you are trying to convey. And this process can go both ways. Sometimes ideas are taken up too readily, such as in the case of growth mindset. The education system is built around a philosophy of individual growth and worth. Mindset theory seemed to support these philosophies with empirical evidence, leading to an injudicious adoption into the school system.

In contrast, the public understanding of memory phenomena, such as retrieval practice and the spacing effect, has made little progress since Dempster’s writing in the 1980s. This may be because we are trying to solve educational problems that are not as salient or meaningful to educators. The education system is laden with multiple goals, not all of which are primarily concerned with helping students remember content more efficiently. Maybe educators have “bigger fish to fry,” for example, by making students feel motivated, that they belong, and that they can grow their abilities even when the odds feel long.

A participatory cognitive science?

In practical terms, how can we enhance the communication of replicable findings from the cognitive psychology literature? We might take a more immersive approach, involving participatory research to gain deeper insights into the perspectives of educators and policymakers. Instead of approaching our research solely from our vantage point, we should start by delving into the challenges they encounter. What issues resonate most with them? Are we addressing their most urgent concerns? How can we maximize the relevance of our research without succumbing to exaggeration or extending beyond the realm of evidence?

My contention is that effective science communication calls for breaking free from the confines of ivory towers and venturing into classrooms, conference rooms, or hospital wards—domains where our research could have the most positive impact. By doing so, we can channel our efforts towards addressing the questions stakeholders find most pertinent. At the same time, we must work towards fortifying the scientific foundation of our research. Scientific rigor may not be the key to helping our research gain traction; but rather, it is a matter of doing what is right and maintaining community trust. Ultimately, through concerted science communication initiatives, we can aspire to cultivate a science that not only boasts empirical support but is also better integrated into wider domains of practice.