Dan Willingham on teachers and psychology

What will the cognitive psychology professor tell us?

Daniel T. Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of widely known books and articles about cognitive psychology, will deliver the 11th Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr. Distinguished Lecture in the History of Psychology at the Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron 15 May 2025.

How well-informed are American teachers about principles of psychology relevant to classrooms? Relevant data are scarce, but discouraging. In this talk, Dr. Willingham will suggest that the core problem is that teachers are taught this content as though they were future researchers, not future practitioners. Dr. Willingham will discuss changes to teacher preparation that could improve the use of psychology in K-12 education, and boost student achievement.¹

As noted previously, I visited the Center for the History of Psychology in April 2025. The center includes the Archives of the History of American Psychology, National Museum of Psychology, and the Institute for Human Science and Culture. Regular readers of SET might remember that the Benjamin Lecture honors our friend and colleague, Ludy Benjamin. There’s a post about a holiday decoration that Ludy sent me as well as a photo of Ludy and me after one of our episodic lunches. Readers can also find few posts about Dan and his work on SET, including several on reading (encouraging children to read—2021; the value of reading books—2023; promoting reading comprehension—2024) and one from 2023 with the two of us at lunch.

I encourage those readers who can attend Dan’s presentation to do so. You can register for the event here.² If you happen to talk to Ludy or Dan, please give them our SET regards.

1. I’ve leaned on Dan a little bit to include research about behavioral psychology in his recommendations about what teachers should learn. I hope he does so.

2. I receive no compensation or favors for promoting this event.