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
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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.
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