1. How do students learn and remember things?
Chloë Marshall, PhD
14th January 2017

2. What do we mean by learning and remembering?
Learning – acquiring knowledge/skills by instruction or study
Remembering – recognising/recalling knowledge/skills
Metacognition – “thinking about thinking”, “knowing about knowing”. Includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning.
encoding
Formula for the volume of a cone:
consolidation
retrieval

3. Learning Teacher recruitment Teacher training, skills, competence
Professional development
Syllabus
Education policy
Education law
Overarching curricula
Links to truancy, crime
Assessment
Learning
Links to employment labour markets
Organisation of classroom
Leadership,
School effectiveness Pedagogy
Organisation of schools
Social influences
Education:
Learning
Teacher training, skills, competence
Teacher recruitment
Syllabus
Assessment
Organisation of classroom (including class sizes, streaming, discipline)
Organisation of schools and educational structures
Resources (staffing, buildings, technology)
Health
Childcare
Parents, families
Social influences
Links to employment, labour markets
Links to truancy, crime
Education policy
Education law
Andy says: “Your list looks pretty comprehensive to me, though, and captures well the systemic side of things that I had in mind, which is driven essentially by sociocultural/political processes. I think the only other things I might want to include are more metal-level structures: overarching curricula, which vary quite a lot across the four home nations (to me syllabus is more about local delivery); overarching organization of provision (primary to tertiary in the UK, but also sub-divisions - again this varies quite a lot from country to country); and systems for promoting/monitoring professional development (e.g. the General Teaching Council in Scotland, the National College in England). There are also some cross-cutting themes that people get very focused on - leadership, school effectiveness and pedagogy are the big three. Pedagogy is something that we do talk to, of course, as a counterpart to learning.”
Parents, families
Organisation of provision (primary secondary, tertiary)
Health
Resources (staffing, buildings, technology)
Childcare

4. Learning is hard for many students
Even the best students at the best universities
report finding studying hard, and
don’t use effective study techniques.

5. Drawing on research by Henry Roediger

6. 5 things that students do and that are supported by the research evidence
i.e. these are strategies that are effective and that generalise:
Retrieval practice (i.e. the “testing effect”)
Distributed practice on tasks (“spaced learning”)
Interleaved practice
Elaborative interrogation
Self-explanation

7. 5 things that students do that are NOT supported by the research evidence
Highlighting/underlining
Re-reading text
Use of imagery for text-based learning
Keyword mnemonics
Summarisation

8. “Neuromyths” that need to be busted
“We only use 10% of our brains”
VAK learning styles

9. 5 things that students do and that are supported by the research evidence
i.e. these are strategies that are effective and that generalise:
Retrieval practice (i.e. the “testing effect”)
Distributed practice on tasks (“spaced learning”)
Interleaved practice
Elaborative interrogation
Self-explanation

10. Retrieval practice (the “testing effect”)
Retrieving something from memory:
measures what someone has learned, but also
changes the retrieved memory, making it easier to recall in the future.
How does retrieval practice work?
The mechanism is not well understood.

11. But what we do know (1) What works
Retrieving information during a test often leads to better future recall than re-reading that same information.
The test should occur at some delay after the initial study session.
Testing doesn’t just improve recall for factual information: it also enhances:
the organization of information, and
the ability to transfer knowledge to new situations.
Some evidence that short-answer questions (i.e. cued recall) work better than multiple choice questions (i.e. recognition), although both can be effective.

12. What we know (2) What works
Test questions should require some degree of retrieval effort.
If students get an answer wrong, they need feedback and a chance to re-study.
Retrieving something on multiple occasions is better than retrieving it just once.
Retrieval practice is more effective when spaced than when massed.

13. Why doesn’t simply re-reading material work?
Reading a text repeatedly creates fluency with what’s written that is often mistaken for mastery of content. → The reader develops an “illusion of knowing” based on familiarity of the content, but struggles later at test time when asked to explain the underlying concepts.

14. Any other ideas why retrieval practice might be effective for enhancing learning?
An incentive to learn the material in the first place
Helps students identify gaps in their knowledge
Decreases test anxiety

15. 5 things that students do and that are supported by the research evidence
i.e. these are strategies that are effective and that generalise:
Retrieval practice (i.e. the “testing effect”)
Distributed practice on tasks (“spaced learning”)
Interleaved practice
Elaborative interrogation
Self-explanation

16. A large body of evidence in favour of spaced learning (John Hattie’s research)

17. Distributed practice on tasks (“spaced learning”)
One lesson is typically insufficient to create
learning that lasts over time.
→ Repetition is a necessity in education.
→ The issue of when students should restudy is central to instruction.
time
time
time

18. Spacing can be manipulated between or within sessions
Massed practice
paucity – shortage
Spaced practice – within session
(“interleaving”)
loggia – balcony
sobriquet – nickname
Spaced practice – across sessions
enhance learning

19. How big a lag between learning episodes is most effective?
Difficult to answer: it depends on a variety of factors (e.g. what is being studied, who is studying, how learning will be assessed, etc.).
One factor that is important is the length of the retention interval between the last study session and the final test.
test
test
lag
lag
maintenance
period
maintenance
period

20. 5 things that students do and that are supported by the research evidence
i.e. these are strategies that are effective and that generalise:
Retrieval practice (i.e. the “testing effect”)
Distributed practice on tasks (“spaced learning”)
Interleaved practice
Elaborative interrogation
Self-explanation

21. Why is interleaved practice effective
Why is interleaved practice effective? (beyond providing a form of spacing?)
Can improve the student’s ability to discriminate in test situations between different types of problems and select the right solutions.
Arguably helps students to reach beyond memorisation to higher levels of conceptual understanding.
Calculate volume of cone
Calculate volume of cone
Calculate volume of cylinder
Calculate volume of sphere

22. 5 things that students do and that are supported by the research evidence
i.e. these are strategies that are effective and that generalise:
Retrieval practice (i.e. the “testing effect”)
Distributed practice on tasks (“spaced learning”)
Interleaved practice
Elaborative interrogation
Self-explanation

23. What is elaborative interrogation?
A higher-order questioning strategy that employs ‘why” questions in order to encourage students to connect new information to their existing knowledge base.
An example:
Arteries are thick and elastic and carry blood that is rich in oxygen from the heart.
Veins are thinner, less elastic, and carry blood rich in carbon dioxide back to the heart.
Students could learn these by rote memorisation, or via a mnemonic

24. Students can turn these facts into “why” questions that can be answered
Arteries
Veins
Why are arteries elastic?
Because they need to accommodate changes in pressure
Why are arteries thick?
Because they need to accommodate high pressure
Why do arteries carry blood away from the heart?
Because blood coming from the heart comes out at high pressure and in spurts of variable pressure
Why do arteries carry blood that is rich in oxygen?
Because the blood coming from the heart is rich in oxygen
Why are veins less elastic?
Because the blood flows continuously and evenly
Why are veins less thick?
Because the blood flows at a lower pressure
Why do veins carry blood to the heart?
Because blood going to the heart flows continuously and evenly
Why do veins carry blood that is rich in CO2?
Because the blood going to the heart is rich in CO2

25. Effective questions enable connections to be made between these new facts and existing knowledge.

26. 5 things that students do and that are supported by the research evidence
i.e. these are strategies that are effective and that generalise:
Retrieval practice (i.e. the “testing effect”)
Distributed practice on tasks (“spaced learning”)
Interleaved practice
Elaborative interrogation
Self-explanation

27. What is self-explanation?
A metacognitive strategy of explaining to-be-learnt material to oneself in order to understand the material.
Has in common with retrieval practice and elaborative interrogation that it is a very active strategy.
Includes:
comprehension monitoring,
paraphrasing,
making predictions and inferences

28. 5 things that students do and that are supported by the research evidence
i.e. these are strategies that are effective and that generalise:
Retrieval practice (i.e. the “testing effect”)
Distributed practice on tasks (“spaced learning”)
Interleaved practice
Elaborative interrogation
Self-explanation

29. Recent research on sleep
Sleep is a powerful aid in memory consolidation, for example in the memorisation of new facts and words
TEDx talk by Robert Stickgold:
Paper by Rasch & Born (2013):