Hi again! 😎 Over the last couple of weeks I have shared some ideas and research about developing understanding, and explored the role of a student’s schemas.
The focus has been on getting new ideas into a learner’s memory. But what about the follow up? What can we do to stop learners from forgetting things that they have come to understand?
It’s all too easy to treat information as ‘learned’ if a class appears to understand and can answer a few immediate questions. But this overlooks two key ideas: the effect of forgetting, and the need for transfer. Let’s consider these.
After the Explanation – Retention
Students may leave at the end of the lesson having mastered the new content and feeling confident, but this is highly misleading. What they can do at this stage is performance, not learning. This means that we must give opportunities to revisit the concepts.
I mentioned back in the spring that forgetting can be useful. It’s the basis of the spacing effect. But that requires us to come back to an idea or skill when learners are on the verge of forgetting, and engage in practice.
Techniques that can help begin in the initial lesson itself. Active retrieval within a study session has been shown to slow down the rate of forgetting. We can therefore engage learners in retrieval practice later in the class, as well as in the immediate follow up (next day, next week, etc). This can be done by:
Retrieval-based note-taking – taking notes after presenting the information, not during.
Using a set of review quiz questions.
Setting up peer questioning or discussion later in the lesson.
It can also be useful to boost metacognitive awareness of forgetting by telling the students that it is more useful to actively retrieve from their memories than to re-read. For example, if engaged in a simple practice task, it would be helpful if they tried to remember facts and concepts first, rather than going straight to their notes/textbooks.
Overall, retention depends on an awareness of forgetting and consolidating effectively and at the right time.
After the Explanation – Transfer
It’s not enough just to revisit factual information. We see this often enough among students who study flashcards and try to memorise definitions. Yes, they are using their memory, but they are not using it well.
In line with what I’ve said about understanding and about schemas, it’s important that factual knowledge forms a coherent structure. Things that help this are:
Engaging in practice tasks that combine ideas, are richly meaningful, and force students to make links.
Varied practice. Practising new knowledge and skills in different contexts, pushing learners out of their (initial) comfort zone.
Metacognitive understanding. Knowing what they know and how to use it.
All three of these things help with transfer – the ability of your students to use what they have learned in new contexts. And that is a key part of learning!
After all, we want people to have flexible knowledge. Rather than having students who are very good at recalling specific information in a predicable context, we want to foster the ability to use what they have learned creatively.
To Sum Up…
Even good teaching can be undermined by a failure to account for consolidation and transfer. However, there are things that we can do to revisit learning, tackle forgetting, and extend what learners can do with new knowledge and skills.
Overall, I feel that education should focus more the ideas of retaining and transferring what has been studied.
Next week – Wed 13th December 2023 – I’ll be giving a webinar on memory and metacognition. More details in next Monday’s newsletter!
All the best,
Jonathan
Last week: How A Starter Can Activate a Schema
Links to my new book, What Teachers Need to Know About Memory:
Amazon UK | Amazon US | Booktopia Australia | Preview on SAGE site.
Please note that my slides and similar materials are used under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.