Research & Expertise

Is “pre-training” the unsung hero of effective learning—or just an unnecessary hurdle for already smart students? That’s the research quest Anna Gorbunova, Anastasiia Kapuza, Ouhao Chen, and Jamie Costley embark on in their recent study, Rethinking Pre-training: Cognitive Load Implications for Learners with Varying Prior Knowledge. Published in Frontiers in Psychology, their work dives into how priming your mind before tackling complex material can transform the learning experience, challenging long-held beliefs about how we actually absorb knowledge.

On 23–28 November, the 17th Asian Conference on Education (ACE2025) was held in Tokyo. It brought together colleagues from the International Laboratory of Research and Design in eLearning of the Institute of Education.

For the first time since the begining of the COVID-19 pandemic, our colleagues went to the international offline conference, European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) 2022, which took place in Yerevan, Armenia this year. ECER conferences are held annually, attracting researchers from more than 70 countries, and are organized by the European Educational Research Association. We asked our colleagues to share their impressions of the conference and talk about the research they presented.

Prashant Loyalka is a visiting Leading Research Fellow at the HSE Institute for Education and the International Laboratory for Education Policy Analysis. His research article, ‘Does Shadow Education Help Students Prepare for College?’ will be published in the International Journal of Educational Development Vol 49, in July 2016. In an interview with HSE News Service, Dr Loyalka talked about his research into the advantages and shortcomings of shadow education and about why American parents send their kids to after-school Russian math class.