Retrieval Practice Evidence
Retrieval Practice Evidence
Jonathan Firth's Memory & Metacognition Updates #35
I hope things are going well there, and that you’ve not been too badly hit by snow or cold!
I promised a shorter update this week, and my aim is to share some of the evidence around one of the best-known desirable difficulties: retrieval practice.
Retrieval is really helpful for consolidating learning, as I have mentioned previously in these updates. Many of you are already aware of this technique, but you might be less familiar with the supporting evidence.
Let me share four of the most useful papers, in my view:
Roediger & Karpicke (2006) found that reading something twice led to a slight short-term benefit compared to reading once then self-testing, but when compared after two days or a week, self-testing (retrieval) had a more lasting benefit than re-reading.
Butler (2010) found that retrieval practice doesn’t just help learners’ memory for facts but can also help them to transfer what they have learned to different contexts.
Agarwal (2019) found that while quizzing facts is helpful for students’ ability to answer skill questions (e.g. analysis, evaluation), engaging in retrieval practice of both fact-based and skill-based questions is better still.
Agarwal, Nunes & Blunt (2021) carried out a review of evidence from multiple classroom studies of retrieval practice involving over 5000 students. They concluded that it consistently benefits learning.
Of course, there is plenty more to dig into. The Agarwal, Nunes & Blunt (2021) review in particular contains a lot of nuance about how best to use the technique, and also makes several recommendations. However, I will come back to these in a future update.
To conclude
That’s it for today. I told you it would be brief! I know that some of you won’t have access to the original research papers, but there are many other sources for those who want to read on. Here’s a blog post that I shared last year:
Quizzes and Tests: In a nutshell… (free to access).
And now a slightly longer one from 2017, which I contributed to along with three other educators:
Assessment as learning: The role of retrieval practice in the classroom (free to access).
You can also find several great resources at the retrievalpractice.org website, co-run by researcher Pooja Agarwal (whose name you will recognise from two of the recommended papers).
All the best for the week ahead,
Jonathan
Last week: Gamification and Cognitive Science
Website: www.jonathanfirth.co.uk
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