The Fidget Delusion

Hey

It’s been a while. Here’s something to light you up…

Big idea 🍉

Schools all around the world are facing increasing pressure when it comes to Special Educational Needs (SEN). We're supporting more students, with more complexity, and more stretched resources. But despite caring deeply, we sometimes end up doing things that help less than we think.

Here are some common interventions which the evidence suggests are weaker than we often assume (or in some cases, are actually harmful):

• Fidget spinners: compete for the very attention they're supposed to free up. Classroom studies show they distract rather than focus students.

• Coloured overlays: have no reliable effect on reading speed or accuracy. The actual barrier (usually decoding) often goes unaddressed.

• Sensory diets/circuits: have almost no quality evidence as school interventions.

• Working-memory training: improves trained tasks, but gains don't transfer to the classroom.

• And so on…

This isn't to say these things never help anyone… some can serve as short-term accommodations for specific pupils. The problem is when they become our default response.

If these interventions aren’t effective, why are they so prevalent? Partly because they feel like they should work. They're visible, concrete, and something we can actively do. Plus, our students often like them, and parents feel reassured. But just because something feels good doesn't mean we should lean on it.

(also, there's often money to be made)

All this is compounded by a lack of prevalent evidence around effective inclusion and related strategies... there's just too little to challenge our wayward intuitions. We’ve ended up with a collective fidget spinner delusion.

So, what's a better way forward? When we look across these interventions, a pattern emerges: they tend to follow from vague diagnoses rather than specific, assessed learning needs. In the next snack, we'll unpack more. But for now, it's worth doing a quick evidence audit, to check whether anything in our own context might be helping less than it seems.

🎓 For more, check out this EEF review of classroom SEN support.

Summary

• With growing levels and complexity of need, schools can sometimes lean on interventions that may be less effective than they appear.

• Many popular interventions (eg. fidget spinners, coloured overlays) feel like they should work, but are not always supported by evidence.

• Rather than applying broad interventions automatically, it’s probably better to focus on specific student learning needs.

Little updates 🥕

• Study of school connectedness → suggests pupils feel more connected through strong relationships & meaningful participation.

• Article on instructional time in maths → shows each extra weekly hour boosts scores, with effects doubling with active participation.

• Paper on student-teacher relationships → argues that reducing early teaching conflict may help avoid poorer long-term adult outcomes.

• Study on judgements of learning → suggests that assessing knowledge can influence memory performance, sometimes even improving recall.

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