What the Pandemic Did to Student Brains | A Conversation with Nancy Weinstein

If you've noticed that students seem different since the pandemic and you're not sure what to do about it, this episode gives you real answers. Nancy Weinstein, Chief Innovation Officer at Otus and co-founder of MindPrint, shares findings from a longitudinal study of 35,000 students aged 8 to 21, tracking cognitive skills from 2015 through and beyond the pandemic. The data reveals something most school leaders haven't yet seen: the biggest change in students isn't attention, which is what teachers almost universally report, it's verbal memory, with the average student now retaining roughly half of what they would have five years ago.

You'll learn why flexible thinking has dropped significantly and what that means for how students respond to feedback in the classroom, why AI may be compounding these challenges, and where to find evidence-based strategies that already exist and work. Nancy also shares a surprising finding: teachers showed similar cognitive shifts to their students, particularly in flexible thinking, which helps explain some of the staffing and morale challenges school leaders have been navigating. If you want to move from "kids are different" to actually knowing what to do about it, this conversation is essential listening.

Resources & Links Mentioned:

MindPrint Learning strategies and resources

Nancy Weinstein on LinkedIn

The Empowered Student by Nancy Weinstein (CAST Publishing, 2018)

John Hattie's Visible Learning

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com

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