Desirable difficulties
Jonathan Firth's Memory & Metacognition Updates #9
Hello, and welcome to another update on memory and metacognition. I hope you are doing well. Summer is starting to feel quite close now! I am still in Europe for research, but I'm looking forward to getting back to Scotland and to family, as well as back to campus for graduation season!
A couple of weeks ago (see issue 7), I wrote about illusions and misconceptions in memory, and the idea that practitioners may mistake immediate performance for learning.
Of course, these illusions apply to students, too. In fact, a lot more research has been done into how school and university students think about and plan their own learning than into teacher metacognition.
The main findings from such research are that students tend to be quite poor at planning and structuring their learning, and they tend to avoid effective, evidence-based study habits (perhaps no surprise to those who work in education?!).
Just like their teachers, students seem to mistakenly believe that practice which feels easier is more effective – when often, the opposite is true.
I talk about an implication in this blog post – we can't just tell students to 'study hard'.
Why We Can’t Just Tell Kids to ‘Study Hard’ | by Jonathan Firth | Inspired Education | Apr, 2022 | Medium — medium.com
A message that parents and educators just keep getting wrong.
A key issue that is raised in the post is that learners don't intuitively understand that practice which feels easier is likely to be less helpful for learning.
This is why interventions like spacing and retrieval practice are important. They can slow things down for learners, but the increased effort can make learning stick better.
These strategies are what memory researchers refer to as desirable difficulties. They make learning harder – but in a good way.
Recommended read
Since I'm talking about performance and learning, I have to recommend the research paper that I cite more than any other when talking about these issues: Soderstrom and Bjork (2015):
Learning Versus Performance: An Integrative Review
I know it's quite a long one, but I think you'll find it well worth a read!
One of the main takeaways is that learning and performance are usually negatively correlated. Or to put it another way, the easier we make our practice exercises, the less effective they will be.
To me, that is not an idea that is widely appreciated in teaching. Teachers often seem to think that it is a key part of their job to make things as straightforward as possible for the learners.
Another surprising quote is as follows:
"Forgetting can foster learning" (Soderstrom & Bjork, p. 192).
If it seems strange that forgetting would be useful, consider this – that's exactly what is happening with the spacing effect. More time passing means that more forgetting is taking place. But this means that future practice is more impactful when it happens.
Next time
I thought it would make sense to dive into a few more specifics about this. What exactly is a desirable difficulty, and what is not? And how will we know?
Until then, all the best :)
Jonathan
Last week: Professional learning
Website: www.jonathanfirth.co.uk
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