https://phys.org/science-news/education/ en-us Phys.org provides latest news on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education Young people who grow up experiencing persistent poverty are more than three times as likely to be not in education, employment or training (NEET) at 17 or 23 (3.3 and 3.4 times, respectively), according to new analysis of the UK Millennium Cohort Study by the University of Liverpool and the University of Manchester, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-poverty-triples-young-people-likelihood.html Economics & Business Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:00:13 EDT news708762902 A new study finds that while most Americans are interested in science and believe it benefits society, the public's relationship with science is more complicated than those positive views suggest. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-americans-complicated-relationship-science.html Social Sciences Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:20:07 EDT news708689761 Does the academic discipline of a scientist's doctorate accurately capture their disciplinary affiliation decades later? Consider a scientist who earned a doctorate in physics 25 years ago who now studies climate change, publishes primarily in interdisciplinary journals and considers herself a climate scientist. Does "physics" still accurately describe where she fits in science? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-captures-scientists-identities-shift-academic.html Social Sciences Fri, 11 Sep 2026 16:20:04 EDT news708347642 A study by Politecnico di Milano and the University of Insubria (Varese and Como) has been published in PLOS Digital Health. The study involved more than 700 children from primary and lower secondary school. The participants used the THInkPen (Tele-Health Ink Pen) while completing two BVSCO-3 tasks from the Battery for the Clinical Assessment of Writing and Orthographic Skills. This is the most widely used test in Italy for assessing writing difficulties, dysgraphia and dysorthography. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-smart-pen-pressure-movement-children.html Education Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:40:02 EDT news708343381 The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns forced people to find ways to get things done remotely. Companies developed systems that made working from home run smoothly. Educators also had to shift to mobile phones and group video calls to get their lessons across and make sure students didn't lose out on their progress. This exposed the need for education systems to be more resilient and adaptive to local and global disruptions. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-lessons-children-emergency-school-closures.html Education Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:20:08 EDT news708335529 Parents often learn the hard way that to make it anywhere on time, they should calculate how much time they think they need to get ready—and double it. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-kids-brains-built-distraction-good.html Education Thu, 10 Sep 2026 15:40:12 EDT news708267002 The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law has released a human rights assessment of the use of large language models (LLMs) in the fields of law, journalism and education. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-llm-threaten-freedom-thought-equality.html Social Sciences Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:00:05 EDT news708186302 More than 3,000 scientific article titles across disciplines have made use of Beatles song titles and lyrics, according to a study published in PLOS One by Gabriel Budel of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and colleagues. This analysis is an unprecedentedly large-scale, cross-disciplinary account of how the Beatles have left their mark on scientific writing. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-beatles-permeated-papers-academic-disciplines.html Social Sciences Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:00:22 EDT news708077101 Families' interest in their kids' education is falling in many high-income countries as school systems struggle with plunging test scores, according to newly released results from a standardized test taken by 15-year-olds around the world. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-families-kids-falling-globe-scores.html Education Wed, 09 Sep 2026 04:40:08 EDT news708147022 One-third of young scientists who had been planning careers in academic research changed their minds in the spring of 2025, according to a new survey. Fewer expected to remain in higher education or work in the U.S., or felt that pursuing a Ph.D. was the right decision. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-survey-young-future-science.html Economics & Business Mon, 07 Sep 2026 17:00:03 EDT news708011103 Parents and teachers might think telling kids "they're smart" is a helpful way to build self-confidence and support positive development. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-youre-smart-backfire-young-children.html Education Mon, 07 Sep 2026 15:20:04 EDT news708000065 Despite efforts to encourage broader participation, women earn about 25% of undergraduate engineering degrees and 18% of undergraduate computer science degrees—and men remain a small minority among people earning nursing and education degrees. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-students-grades-degrees-academic-major.html Social Sciences Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:20:01 EDT news707740774 How important is it that kids learn to tell right from wrong? Businessman and former university chancellor David Gonski recently called for ethics classes to be rolled out in all Australian schools to boost social cohesion. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-largest-formal-ethics-students-moral.html Social Sciences Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:20:11 EDT news707474617 Young people leaning on AI chatbots for emotional support or personal advice are significantly more likely to struggle with serious emotional problems, feel isolated and doubt that they truly matter to others, a new uOttawa study warns. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-chatbot-emotional-loneliness-students.html Education Mon, 31 Aug 2026 18:50:01 EDT news707416262 Intelligent people tend to perform better at school and at work, as numerous studies have shown. But what happens in domains where incentives such as good grades or financial rewards don't apply and where socioeconomic status is not a significant factor? Wine knowledge is a case in point. Intelligence researcher Maximilian Krolo of Saarland University has investigated whether intelligence can predict the acquisition of deep knowledge in a specialized domain. The findings have now been published in the journal Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities in an article co-authored with Professor of Psychology Timothy C. Bates of the University of Edinburgh. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-bright-people-wine-higher-intelligence.html Social Sciences Tue, 25 Aug 2026 19:40:03 EDT news706889575 Large language models (LLMs) are making writing styles more similar without changing the overall meaning, according to an analysis of more than 880,000 texts across different writing types published in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings indicate that using LLMs could make it more difficult to identify important clues about aspects of a person's identity, personality and mental health from their language. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-chatbots-similar-identity-personality.html Social Sciences Tue, 25 Aug 2026 10:40:04 EDT news706868528 Up until two years ago, using large language models was still considered a special skill that everyone was encouraged to learn. Now, it is ubiquitous, especially in writing research papers that eventually become part of the scientific knowledge we build around a subject. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-marker-words-sharp-ai-biomedical.html Education Mon, 24 Aug 2026 16:00:07 EDT news706796832 Some teenagers are happy to wait for a bigger reward tomorrow rather than cash in today. Others would rather take the sure thing now—or gamble on a risky, high-payoff bet. According to a new study, these everyday differences in patience and risk appetite are more than personality quirks. They help determine which program a high school graduate chooses—and, with it, the shape of their working life for decades to come. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-patience-longer-paths-faster-growth.html Economics & Business Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:20:01 EDT news706532281 From the daily weather forecast to a baseball player's batting average to an individual's risk of developing lung cancer, understanding statistics can help people in the United States navigate their lives, according to Mark Ramos, assistant research professor of health policy and administration at Penn State. However, more than half of adults in the U.S. reported knowing little or nothing about basic statistical concepts, according to a recent study led by Ramos. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-adults-lack-basic-statistical.html Mathematics Fri, 21 Aug 2026 11:20:03 EDT news706525741 When we read a news story about a new cancer treatment, an Alzheimer's breakthrough or an innovative technology, we rarely think about everything that happens behind the scenes before that information reaches newspapers, radio or television. Scientists publish their findings in specialist journals, and journalists decide which of those papers are worth reporting to the public. This selection shapes the scientific information available to society, influences public opinion on specific topics and creates trends of interest that may even affect which areas of research receive more or less funding in the future. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-lab-headlines-news-dont.html Social Sciences Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:50:01 EDT news706456741 Machine learning models can identify jazz pianists from recordings and reveal the musical "fingerprints" that make individual performers recognizable, according to a study investigating 20 famous jazz pianists. The research, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, could offer insight into artist attribution and style, cultural heritage, and music education. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-iconic-jazz-musicians.html Social Sciences Mon, 17 Aug 2026 18:00:01 EDT news706190762 Scientists are increasingly relying on powerful data sources and tools that they often cannot fully understand, inspect or verify, according to a new study. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-black-technologies-undermine-confidence-scientific.html Social Sciences Sat, 15 Aug 2026 07:00:02 EDT news705830101 A widely cited Nature cover article from 2023 claimed that scientific innovation has significantly declined in recent decades. This finding was based on a citation analysis of large sets of metadata concerning scientific papers and patents. Researchers from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and KU Leuven have found that incomplete reference data account for most of the alleged decline in scientific disruption. Their article is also published in the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-science-disruptive-years-delay.html Education Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:50:01 EDT news705765301 Students who attended public school pre-K performed better academically through high school than those in family-based child care, according to new research from Florida International University. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-year-pre-impacts-child-academic.html Education Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:00:05 EDT news705748412 A new study from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management found that research proposals showing stronger signs of AI-assisted writing were four percentage points more likely to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-grant-narrowing-ideas.html Economics & Business Tue, 11 Aug 2026 19:20:03 EDT news705679801 Many parents have mixed feelings about the unrestricted use of artificial intelligence (AI) for schoolwork. They are concerned about the potential impact on their child's ability to learn but also don't want them to be left behind if other young people are using AI. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-homework-parents-pay-subscriptions.html Social Sciences Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:40:01 EDT news705254582 Students who open a personal social media account earlier in adolescence appear to perform worse on later standardized tests, according to a study in Nature Human Behaviour based on 5,227 Italian students. The authors speculate that these differences may be attributable to excessive social media engagement and disruptions to students' attention. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-kids-social-media-earlier-worse.html Social Sciences Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:40:06 EDT news704980981 How do students actually use AI learning assistants? A new research paper by IU International University of Applied Sciences provides the first robust answers to this question. For the study "Using AI-based Learning Assistants in Higher Education: A Large-Scale Descriptive Analysis," the research team led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kristina Schaaff, Dr. Valerie Hekkel and Quintus Stierstorfer analyzed anonymized usage data from approximately 77,000 IU online students who were using the Learning Companion Syntea at the time of the study. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ai-mirrors-student-online-learners.html Education Sun, 02 Aug 2026 10:20:01 EDT news704721316 A scientific paper reads as a clean progression from question to result. And yet, research almost never happens that way. Experiments fail, conversations redirect projects, and none of it survives into print. When the founders of a field retire, their tacit knowledge goes with them, and nothing records that it existed. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-inverting-seminar-recover-scientific-papers.html Education Fri, 31 Jul 2026 05:00:01 EDT news704619901 Currently popular biographies of famous scientists may demotivate—rather than inspire—children's desire to study or pursue careers in science, according to researchers who studied the messages in 422 bestselling children's books. Study leader Jessica Gladstone, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said that while parents and educators often use these books to try to spark children's interest in science through exposure to role models, their narratives tend not to support this goal. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-scientists-biographies-demotivate-children-science.html Social Sciences Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:20:07 EDT news704474581