It would be great if some of our students were to read this article: it's mostly about what they should be doing between lessons or in the runup to exams to improve their retention of material. That said, it's really useful for us to think about how we want to tell them to revise, as well as the tasks we're setting for homework or even in lessons. As ever, you can download the full article - and the much longer one on which it is based - below. The article covers 10 strategies; I've summarised the most effective below. If you just want the headlines, here they are: Again, practice testing comes out on top. Here's what the researchers say:“by viewing tests as the end-all assessments administered only after learning is complete, teachers and students are missing out on the benefits of one of the most effective strategies for improving student learning”. This doesn't mean that we should be setting practice exams instead of teaching - although practice exams are an indispensible study strategy. Rather, it means that we should use quizzes regularly to help students embed key information. This could be quotations in English, key terms in Science, dates in History or fundamental processes in Maths. Quizzing is an effective strategy across the curriculum. I've written a longer post on the efficacy of practice testing here and I don't want to repeat material. This is what 'Strengthening the Student Toolbox' says which 'Inexpensive Techniques to Improve Education' doesn't:
The second really effective strategy is distributed practice. Again, I have written about this elsewhere and won't repeat myself here. I used the analogy of myself playing golf in my previous post. Dunlosky uses the more student-relevant analogy of video games: “when playing video games, students see their abilities and skills improve dramatically over time in large part because they keep coming back to play the game in a distributed fashion”. We need to try and encourage this model in lessons, mainly through returning throughout a year to topics studied earlier in the course. Doing so will make it more likely that students will retain key information when they come to revising for their exams. Similarly, we should try in lessons to advise students on how they should space their revision in our subjects. For exampe, rather than encouraging students to do one hour a day of English revision ahead of their GCSE exam, I should encourage them to follow a more specific timetable that looks something like this: Monday: Quiz on Macbeth quotations - Practice essay on Unseen Poetry - Quiz on Macbeth. Tuesday: Test on themes from poetry anthology - Practice response to extract from Macbeth - Quiz on poetic techniques. Wednesday: Quiz on Jane Eyre quotations - Practice respons to poetry anthology question - Quiz on Jane Eyre quotations. Thursday: Quiz on An Inspector Calls quotations - Practice response on Jane Eyre - Quiz on An Inspector Calls quotations. Friday: Practice An Inspector Calls Essay.
6 Comments
This article was put together by The Sutton Trust. It is a huge review of decades of educational research. If you want to read the whole report, scroll to the bottom of the page where you can download it. The review set out to address three apparently simple questions:
Having looked at decades of research done in univerisites and schools and focusing on educational effectiveness research, intervention studies and cognitive science, the authors identified six components of great teaching, about which they say: "This should be seen as offering a ‘starter kit’ for thinking about effective pedagogy. Good quality teaching will likely involve a combination of these attributes manifested at different times; the very best teachers are those that demonstrate all of these features”. This point, I think, captures our intuitive idea that there is more than one way of being a great teacher. 1. (Pedagogical) content knowledge (Strong evidence of impact on student outcomes) The most effective teachers have deep knowledge of the subjects they teach: this is especially true of teachers of maths, English and science. Coe et al explain: "As well as a strong understanding of the material being taught, teachers must also understand the ways students think about the content, be able to evaluate the thinking behind students’ own methods, and identify students’ common misconceptions". On this, I've included a link below to a grid that I use when planning that encourages me to think about potential misconceptions, keywords and also to plan the key questions. Feel free to have a look and use if it's helpful. 2. Quality of instruction (Strong evidence of impact on student outcomes) Quality of instruction is at the heart of all frameworks of teaching effectiveness. Key elements such as effective questioning and use of assessment are found in all of them. Specific practices like the need to review previous learning, provide models for the kinds of responses students are required to produce, provide adequate time for practice to embed skills securely and scaffold new learning are also elements of high quality instruction. 3. Classroom climate (Moderate evidence of impact on student outcomes) Again, the empirically based frameworks all include something on classroom climate, though this heading may cover a range of aspects of teaching. Some emphasise the quality of relationships and interactions between teachers and students. Also under this heading may come teacher expectations: the need to create a classroom environment that is constantly demanding more and never satisfied, but still affirming to students’ self-worth and not undermining their feelings of self-efficacy. Promotion of different kinds of motivational goals may also fit here, as may the different attributions teachers make and encourage for success and failure (e.g. fixed versus growth mindset, attributions to effort and strategy rather than ability or luck). Related to this is the valuing and promotion of resilience to failure (grit). 4. Classroom management (Moderate evidence of impact on student outcomes) All the empirically based frameworks include some element of classroom management. A teacher’s abilities to make efficient use of lesson time, to coordinate classroom resources and space, and to manage students’ behaviour with clear rules that are consistently enforced, are all relevant to maximising the learning that can take place. These factors are mostly not directly related to learning; they are necessary hygiene factors to allow learning, rather than direct components of it. 5. Teacher beliefs (Some evidence of impact on student outcomes) The idea that it matters why teachers adopt particular practices, the purposes they aim to achieve, their theories about what learning is and how it happens and their conceptual models of the nature and role of teaching in the learning process all seem to be important. Although the evidence to support this claim is not unequivocal, it seems strong enough to include it at this stage. 6. Professional behaviours (Some evidence of impact on student outcomes) It seems appropriate to include a final heading that captures some broader aspects of professional behaviour. Danielson’s Framework for Teaching includes elements such as reflecting on and developing professional practice, supporting colleagues, and liaising and communicating with stakeholders such as parents.
Interestingly, the Sutton Trust report also provides a list of strategies that, despite frequent advocacy, lack a solid evidence base. There may be some controversy here. I'll list them with quotations but without comment. Feel free to respond in the comments box below. Again, the whole report is attached at the bottom of the page if you'd like to read it. Things That Don’t Work: Allow learners to discover key ideas for themselves Enthusiasm for ‘discovery learning’ is not supported by research evidence, which broadly favours direct instruction (Kirschner et al, 2006). Although learners do need to build new understanding on what they already know, if teachers want them to learn new ideas, knowledge or methods they need to teach them directly. Group learners by ability Evidence on the effects of grouping by ability, either by allocating students to different classes, or to within-class groups, suggests that it makes very little difference to learning outcomes (Higgins et al, 2014). Although ability grouping can in theory allow teachers to target a narrower range of pace and content of lessons, it can also create an exaggerated sense of within-group homogeneity and between-group heterogeneity in the teacher’s mind (Stipek, 2010). This can result in teachers failing to make necessary accommodations for the range of different needs within a supposedly homogeneous ‘ability’ group, and over-doing their accommodations for different groups, going too fast with the high-ability groups and too slow with the low. Encourage re-reading and highlighting to memorise key ideas This finding has already been mentioned in summarising the review by Dunlosky et al (2013). Re-reading and highlighting are among the commonest and apparently most obvious ways to memorise or revise material. They also give a satisfying – but deceptive – feeling of fluency and familiarity with the material (Brown et al, 2014). However, a range of studies have shown that testing yourself, trying to generate answers, and deliberately creating intervals between study to allow forgetting, are all more effective approaches. Ensure learners are always active, rather than listening passively, if you want them to remember This claim is commonly presented in the form of a ‘learning pyramid’ which shows precise percentages of material that will be retained when different levels of activity are employed. These percentages have no empirical basis and are pure fiction. 'Memory is the residue of thought' (Willingham, 2008), so if you want students to remember something you have to get them to think about it. This might be achieved by being ‘active’ or ‘passive’”.
Testing is the second 'Inexpensive Technique to Improve Education'. “A large amount of research in the past 20 years has shown that the act of taking a test does not simply measure what has been learned but solidifies that learning”. The finding is usually demonstrated using variations of the following process: students are taught something; some students are immediately tested while some are not; all students are tested at a later date. What apparently pretty much always happens - this finding has one of the most robust evidence bases of all the strategies I’ve ever read about - is that the students who were tested shortly after learning new material remembered it much better later on. Memory, intuitively, is even better when feedback is given on the initial test. Because when they take a test, students are forced into consciously trying to remember - a process called Retrieval Practice - the simple activity of sitting a test makes them better rememberers by smoothing neural pathways to relevant information. But testing has other benefits as well. It shows students what they know and what they don’t know and so allows them to focus their future study on what they don’t know. Students therefore study material more effectively after they’ve taken a test. Teachers, also, benefit from having their students take regular tests as it makes it easier to plan tailored interventions and/or reteaching of material. Unlike highlighting, for example, tests help students in the process of identifying the most important information. Regular tests throughout a unit of work, hopefully, encourage students and teachers to engage in regular recall and revision during and between lessons. In some ways, by encouraging students to use testing as a revision strategy, or by giving some lesson time over to testing, we are sacrificing short-term gains for long-term benefits. A strategy I have used is to give students some information - usually in knowledge organiser format - and five minutes of study time. I have them sit a five question test immediately (the resourcees from one of these lessons are attached at the bottom of this post) and then again at the end of the lesson. Research suggests that the students would do better in the end-of-lesson test if, instead of immediately being tested, they were given more study time. In a test delivered the following week, however, my strategy will win out. In this way, testing is an example of what Robert Bjork calls ‘desirable difficulty’. The graph below, from a 2006 study by Roediger and Karpicke, illustrates this effect. If you're interested in reading more, try these: The Many Benefits of Retrieval Practice - The Learning Scientists 'Knowledge Organisers' - Joe Kirby (History Teacher) Database of Knowledge Organisers - All Subjects
Explanatory Questioning is the third (and final) 'Inexpensive Technique to Improve Education'. My little boy always wants to know what things are.Then he'll want to know why things are what they are. Asking why is one of our most innate impulses. This is because, partly, it helps us organise our world and to remember the things in it: what they're called and how they link together. The authors have actually grouped two related techniques together here: elaborative interrogation and self-explanation. Here, in their own words, are definitions for each.
Like testing, explanatory questioning creates desirable difficulties: asking students why new facts are true will slow, for example, their reading of a worksheet or textbook. It will, however, embed that knolwedge more securely in students' long-term memories and therefore leave them better equipped to tackle more challenging tasks in the future. For this reason, the article ends with the hugely important statement that “the construction of a solid knowledge base is critical for promoting creative synthesis; if the knowledge base is lacking then further synthesis will likely not occur”. If you're interested in reading more, try these: 'Metacognitive questioning and the use of worked examples' - Mempowered (uses Maths examples) 'Learn How to Study Using Elaborative Interrogation' - The Learning Scientists Distribution is the first 'Inexpensive Technique to Improve Education'.
The founding principle here is that repetition of material benefits memory. Going beyond that, it is claimed that spacing out these repetitions makes them even more beneficial. A really interesting thing about this principle is that despite coming from cognitive psychology, it’s actually pretty old: the benefits of distributing practice were first described in 1885. It is also quite a simple idea. Typically, the researchers explain, teachers introduce students to a knew skill, or to a new piece of knoweledge, and them have them practice using it. Maths teachers might explain pythagorus theorem to their students, for example, and then have students practice using it again and again within the lesson and then perhaps for homework. While they don’t reject the value of this practice, the writers insist that we should not mistake students’ abilities to perform a new skill - or remember a new fact or definition - within the relatively short time frame of a lesson for genuine mastery or, even, progress. More valuable, they argue, is to distribute this practice over a longer time frame. This makes intuitive sense. I play better golf by the time I’ve reached the fifteenth tee than I did on the first, second or third holes. But I shouldn’t assume that I’ve made meaningful progress as a golfer over this time. If I really want, or need, to get better at golf, then I need to play more often than every three months. If I distributed that practice throughout those three months, I would get better. So how do we do that in the classroom? Here’s what they say: “Teachers can incorporate distributed practice into students’ learning by reviewing topics covered in previous lectures at the beginning of each class and/or giving homework assignments that include items from previous chapters”. A couple of things that I’ve tried: make a bank of quiz questions at the start of a Scheme of Work that I can space, and repeat, throughout the term, and beyond; use (or reuse) activities intended as plenaries as starters in subsequent lessons. If you're interested in reading more. Try these: "Ask the Cognitive Scientist: DIstributed vs. Massed Practice", Dan WIllingham (Cognitive Pyschologist). "Round and Round we go: Teaching English in Spirals", Andy Tharby (English Teacher). "A Week Working at UCLA in the Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab", WIlliam Emeny (Maths Teacher). The authors of this report claim, in their own words, to “identify three general principles that are inexpensive to implement and have been shown in both laboratory and field experiments to improve learning”. The principles are: distribution; retrieval practice; explanatory questioning. Happily, since we don’t work in labs, or in fields, in describing each technique, they also “discuss classroom applications”. I’ve summarised each principle - just click on the one you're interested in - and also tried to link to blogs by teachers who have applied, or tried to apply, the principle in their lessons. If you want to read the original article. You can download it below.
|
ArchivesCategories |