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Andrew Watson About Andrew Watson

Andrew began his classroom life as a high-school English teacher in 1988, and has been working in or near schools ever since. In 2008, Andrew began exploring the practical application of psychology and neuroscience in his classroom. In 2011, he earned his M. Ed. from the “Mind, Brain, Education” program at Harvard University. As President of “Translate the Brain,” Andrew now works with teachers, students, administrators, and parents to make learning easier and teaching more effective. He has presented at schools and workshops across the country; he also serves as an adviser to several organizations, including “The People’s Science.” Andrew is the author of "Learning Begins: The Science of Working Memory and Attention for the Classroom Teacher."

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The Neuroscience of Retrieval Practice
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-27-2020

The Neuroscience of Retrieval Practice

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What’s the best way for students to practice? Should they review information or procedures? Or, should they try to remember or enact them?

We’ve got scads of research showing that retrieval practice helps brains learn.

That is: if I want to learn the definition of a word I’ve studied, I should try to recall it before I look it up again. (For a handy review, check out RetrievalPractice.org.)

So, we know that retrieval practice works. But: why? What’s happening in the brain that makes it work?

Two Possibilities

We’ve got several possible answers, but let’s focus conceptually on two of them.

Increased neural connections

Reduced neural connections

That is: when I engage in retrieval practice, I push myself to remember X. But it takes me a while to get to X. I might start with S, and then wonder about Y. Perhaps I’ll take a detour to gamma. Eventually, I figure out X.

During this mental work, I both remember X and connect X to all those other (rejected) possibilities: S and Y and gamma. By increasing connections among all these topics, I make it easier to remember X later on. If I accidentally think about S, I can quickly get to X.

Or, maybe the opposite process happens.

The first time I try to remember X, I waste mental time with S and gamma. But, the next time, I’ve gotten better at remembering X, and so I take less time to get there. I can “prune away” extraneous mental connections and thereby simplify the remembering process.

In this account, by reducing the steps involved in remembering X, I see the benefits of retrieval practice.

We Have a Winner (?)

A research team in Europe took on this question, and looked at several studies in this field.

Whenever you start looking at neuroscience research, you should brace yourself for complexity. And, this research is no exception. It’s REALLY complicated.

The short version goes like this. Van den Broek and colleagues identify several brain regions associated with memory formation and retrieval. You might have heard of the angular gyrus. You might not have heard of the inferior parietal lobe. Anyway, they’ve got a list of plausible areas to study.

They then asked: did retrieval practice produce more activity in those regions (compared to review)? If yes, that finding would support the “increased connection” hypothesis.

Or, did retrieval practice result in less activity in those regions? That finding would support the “reduced connection” hypothesis.

The answer? Less activity. At least in the studies van den Broek’s team analyzed, the “reduced connection” hypothesis makes better predictions than the “increased connection hypothesis.”

To be clear: I’ve left out a few other explanations they consider. And: I’ve simplified this answer a bit. If you’re intrigued, I encourage you to look at the underlying review: it’s FASCINATING.

To Sum Up

We have at least a tentative idea about why retrieval practice works.

And: we have SUPER PERSUASIVE evidence that retrieval practice works.

Even though we’re not 100% sure about the why, we should — as teachers — give our students as many opportunities as we can to retrieve.

Beyond “Tricks-n-Tips”: What does Cog Sci Tell Us About Online Learning?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-22-2020

Beyond “Tricks-n-Tips”: What does Cog Sci Tell Us About Online Learning?

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In our early scramble to get teaching online, it’s easy to focus on the immediately practical: how to auto-mute on Zoom, how to use Dropbox links, how to find the best online resources.

This emphasis on tricks and tips makes good sense in the short term.

Once we’ve  gotten a few days’ experience in this new teaching world, we can take a mental step back and ask about the bigger learning picture.

What can cognitive science tell us about teaching and learning online?

As is so often the case, the answer to that question boils down to these words: “don’t just do this thing. Instead, think this way.”

In other words: research can give lots of very specific advice. But it’s probably most useful when it suggests broad, flexible principles that teachers can adapt to our own specific circumstances.

One Place to Start

Regular readers know that working memory is essential for learning. It allows us to hold and combine ideas, bits of information, mental processes, and so forth.

When we successfully hold and combine — and practice doing so the right way — that’s when learning happens.

Alas, we don’t have much working memory.

This CRUCIAL bottleneck dooms many worthy teaching endeavors. But, if we manage it well, we show real expertise in our craft.

So, if the question is:

“what can cognitive science tell us about online learning?”

one answer is:

“As much as we can, we should recognize and mitigate the working memory demands of this new learning world.”

In other words: students are using working memory not only to learn our content, but also to manage the novel physical and mental space in which this learning should happen. As much as feasible, we should help.

A Simple Example

Over on Twitter, I’ve been learning from David Weston (@informed_edu) to get practical information about online teaching. (Some of those “tricks and tips.”)

For instance, he recently posted a video showing how teachers can show a PowerPoint presentation over Zoom.

For some of us, that’s immensely helpful information.

At the same time — depending on your prior knowledge — this video might require lots of heavy lifting in working memory.

You’ve got to use ALT+TAB (if you’re using a PC) or COMMAND+TAB (if you’re using a MAC). You’ve got to navigate one arrangement of buttons for PowerPoint, and a quite different arrangement for Zoom. You’ve got to determine whether or not you have to switch back-n-forth during the presentation to advance the PowerPoint slides.

If you know from PowerPoint and Zoom, then this combination of steps is probably quite easy to manage.

If, however, you’re a newbie to either, then you might struggle to process all those steps effectively. You’ll probably have to rewatch parts of the video. You’ll probably make several mistakes. You’ll probably get frustrated before you finally figure it out.

And — here’s my key point — our students are probably experiencing similar frustrations. They’re figuring out new systems. They’re adapting old learning models to new (bizarre) circumstances.

All that working memory stress comes on top of the working memory stress that learning always requires.

And so my advice is not “do this thing” (“Here’s how you can solve this problem…”) Instead, cognitive science encourages us to “think this way.”

We should develop the new mental habit of asking: how does this particular learning arrangement increase working memory load for me and my students? And, what can I do to fix the problem?

Two Important Points

First: almost certainly the solutions to the working memory problems will be…

… choose to slow down and practice the new/unfamiliar steps,

… use your teacherly instincts,

… be patient with your students and yourself.

That advice isn’t super specific. But: it’s really flexible. And, given what we know about working memory, it really will help.

Second: I’ve used Weston’s video as an example of potential working memory overload NOT because it’s badly done. Instead, Weston has created a video that will help most people; and, it will help even more if we pause to recognize its working memory demands.

That is: if technology just isn’t your thing, if you’ve never Zoomed before, if you’re not sure whether you have a PC or a Mac, assume that you’ll need to reduce working memory demands in one part of your teaching world to create some working memory headroom to deal with the technology.

That’s hard to do. But: it’s MUCH easier to do if we proactively think this way than if we try to solve working memory problems as they occur.

Cognitive science tells us that our brains work that way. We can use that knowledge to make online teaching and learning the best it can be.

Beyond the Mouse: Pointing in Online Learning [Repost]
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-19-2020

Beyond the Mouse: Pointing in Online Learning [Repost]

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As teachers across the country prepare to move our work online, I’ve been looking over previous posts that might offer practical guidance.

This post — from July of last year — asks a simple question: in online teaching, does pointing matter?

Happily, research by Richard Mayer points us in a useful direction.

You know, of course, that the right kind of movement can help students learn. The nascent field of “embodied cognition” works to explore the strategies that work most effectively.

Here’s a collection of resources.

And, here’s a recent blog post about kindergarteners moving to learn the number line.

You also know that online learners easily get distracted, often because they multitask. (I say “they” because you and I would never do such things.)

This recent post shows that even folding laundry — a harmless-seeming activity — reduces online learning.

What happens when we put these two research pools together?

Specifically: can movement reduce distraction, and increase learning, for online learners?

Benefits of Online Pointing?

Several researchers — including the estimable Richard Mayer — wanted to answer that question.

Specifically, they wanted to know: do pointing gestures made by the teacher help online students learn?

They had students watch an online lecture (about “neural transmission,” naturally).

For the first group of students, the teacher pointed at specific places on relevant diagrams.

For the second group, the teacher pointed generally toward the diagrams (but not at specific parts of them).

For the third, the teacher moved his hands about, without pointing specifically.

For the fourth, the teacher didn’t move his hands.

Do different pointing strategies help or hurt?

Benefits Indeed

Sure enough, pointing matters.

Students in the first group spent more time looking at the relevant parts of the diagrams.

They did better on a test that day.

And — most important — they did better than the other groups on a test a week later.

Now: a week isn’t exactly learning. We want our students to remember facts and concepts for months. (Preferably, forever.)

But, the fact that the memories had lasted a week suggests it’s MUCH likelier they’ll last longer still.

Practical Implications

If your classroom life includes online teaching, or teaching with videos, try to include specific pointing gestures to focus students on relevant information. At least with this student population, such gestures really helped.

By the way, this study doesn’t answer an interesting and important question: “does student movement as they watch online lectures help or hurt their learning?”

We know from the study cited above that irrelevant movement (like folding laundry) doesn’t help. But: should students mirror your gestures as they watch videos? Should you give them particular gestures to emulate?

We don’t know yet…but I hope future research helps us find an answer.

What Do Teachers Get Right About Cognitive Science?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-16-2020

What Do Teachers Get Right About Cognitive Science?

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Here’s a chance to test your knowledge about the teaching implications of cognitive science. Which answer would you pick to this question?

After teaching students the names of the branches of the US government and what each does, which would be the most effective way a teacher could help their students remember this information?

A) Have students read the facts for 10 days at the beginning of class.

B) Have students copy the facts into a notebook where they can reference them as needed.

C) Have students take a once-a-week quiz for 10 weeks where they recall the facts from memory.

D) Have students participate in a review game where they have to recall the facts from memory several times in one class period.

As you think about that question — which I’ll answer later in the post — ask yourself: what basic principle of learning informs your choice?

How Can We Discover What Teachers Know?

For several years now, Deans for Impact have worked to improve teacher education. In particular, they want schools of education to emphasize well-established principles from cognitive science.

They have done lots of great work to further this mission — including publishing this invaluable resource on the science of learning. (Quick: download it now!)

Of course, if they — and we — are going to help teachers improve, we have to know what teachers already believe and do. If teachers don’t believe in learning styles theory, then we don’t have to debunk it. (Alas, lots of teachers do.)

To answer that question, Deans for Impact developed a 54 question assessment of teacher beliefs, and administered it to 1000+ teachers in the fall of 2019. The question you answered above is one of those 54 questions.

Based on the answers they got, they now have a much better idea of typical beliefs and misunderstandings. As they note, however, these teachers are enrolled in education schools that are interested in cognitive science. So:

“the data generated from this assessment is more likely to overstate what most teacher-candidates know about learning science.”

With that caveat in mind, what did they learn?

What Do Teachers Know about Cognitive Science?

Unsurprisingly, D4I found a mixed bag.

In some categories, teachers-in-training did quite well. In particular, they had good information about the importance of building, and the right ways to build, feedback loops.

That’s really good news, of course, because feedback is so important.

In general, teachers also had a clear understanding that prior knowledge matters a lot. When students lack relevant background knowledge, they struggle mightily to learn.

Sadly, teachers overestimated the possibility of critical thinking.

Of course we want our students to have strong critical thinking skills. But, for the most part, those skills don’t exist generically. That is: I must have a great deal of specific content knowledge before I can think critically about a particular topic.

If that claim seems surprising or suspect, try to answer this question: are Dreiser’s novels more like Wharton’s or Dos Passos’s? Unless you know A LOT about Dreiser and Wharton and Dos Passos (and novels), you’ll struggle to have much to say.

Needs Improvement

Alarmingly, teachers-in-training scored only 33% on questions relating to “practicing with a purpose.” We learn almost everything by practicing in the right way, so this finding should encourage us to focus quite emphatically on this research field.

To do that, let’s return to the question at the top of this post. What kind of practice would help students remember information about branches of the US government?

A) Have students read the facts for 10 days at the beginning of class.

This choice spaces practice out. That’s good. But, it doesn’t allow for active recall. As we know from the world of retrieval practice, recall creates more lasting memories than mere review.

B) Have students copy the facts into a notebook where they can reference them as needed.

This choice is a dud. It requires students to do minimal processing (“copying”!), and to do it once. Nothing to see here. Move along.

C) Have students take a once-a-week quiz for 10 weeks where they recall the facts from memory.

Choice C requires recall (a quiz). And, it includes spacing (over 10 weeks!). Spacing + retrieval looks great!

D) Have students participate in a review game where they have to recall the facts from memory several times in one class period.

This option sounds fun — it’s a game! And, it includes active recall. But, alas, active recall combined with fun isn’t as beneficial as active recall combined with spacing.

So, we might be tempted by option D — in fact, 60% of teachers-in-training chose it. Only 13% opted for choice C: the one best supported by cognitive science. (By the way: if you’re interested in combining retrieval practice with spacing, check out this research.)

In Sum

Generally speaking: keep Deans for Impact on your radar. They’re a GREAT (and greatly reliable) resource for our work.

Specifically speaking: this most recent report lets us know where we should focus most urgently as we help teachers improve our profession.

Overcoming Potential Perils of Online Learning [Repost]
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-13-2020

Overcoming Potential Perils of Online Learning [Repost]

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In June of 2019, I wrote about Dr. Rachael Blasiman’s research into the effect of typical distractions on online learning.

Given the current health climate, I thought her work might be especially helpful right now.

The key take-aways here:

First: (unsurprisingly) distractions interfere with online learning, and

Second: (crucially) we can do something about that.

In brief, we should start our online classes by teaching students how to learn online…

Here’s the post from June.

Online learning offers many tempting — almost irresistible — possibilities. Almost anyone can study almost anything from almost anywhere.

What’s not to love?

A tough-minded response to that optimistic question might be:

“Yes, anyone can study anything, but will they learn it?”

More precisely: “will they learn it roughly as well as they do in person?”

If the answer to that question is “no,” then it doesn’t really matter that they undertook all that study.

Rachael Blasiman and her team wanted to know if common at-home distractions interfere with online learning.

So: can I learn online while…

…watching a nature documentary?

…texting a friend?

…folding laundry?

…playing a video game?

…watching The Princess Bride?

Helpful Study, Helpful Answers

To answer this important and practical question, Blasiman’s team first had students watch an online lecture undistracted. They took a test on that lecture, to see how much they typically learn online with undivided attention.

Team Blasiman then had students watch 2 more online lectures, each one with a distractor present.

Some students had a casual conversation while watching. Others played a simple video game. And, yes, others watched a fencing scene from Princess Bride.

Did these distractions influence their ability to learn?

On average, these distractions lowered test scores by 25%.

That is: undistracted students averaged an 87% on post-video quizzes. Distracted students averaged a 62%.

Conversation and The Princess Bride were most distracting (they lowered scores by ~30%). The nature video was least distracting — but still lowered scores by 15%.

In case you’re wondering: men and women were equally muddled by these distractions.

Teaching Implications

In this case, knowledge may well help us win the battle.

Blasiman & Co. sensibly recommend that teachers share this study with their students, to emphasize the importance of working in a distraction-free environment.

And, they encourage students to make concrete plans to create — and to work in — those environments.

(This post, on “implementation intentions,” offers highly effective ways to encourage students to do so.)

I also think it’s helpful to think about this study in reverse. The BAD news is that distractions clearly hinder learning.

The GOOD news: in a distraction-free environment, students can indeed start to learn a good deal of information.

(Researchers didn’t measure how much they remembered a week or a month later, so we don’t know for sure. But: we’ve got confidence they had some initial success in encoding information.)

In other words: online classes might not be a panacea. But, under the right conditions, they might indeed benefit students who would not otherwise have an opportunity to learn.

I’ve just learned that both of Dr. Blasiman’s co-authors on this study were undergraduates at the time they did the work. That’s quite unusual in research world, and very admirable! [6-11-19]

Does Teaching HANDWRITING Help Students READ?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-11-2020

Does Teaching HANDWRITING Help Students READ?

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I recently saw a newspaper headline suggesting that teaching students HANDWRITING ultimately improves their READING ability.

As an English teacher, I was intrigued by that claim.

As a skeptic, I was … well … skeptical.

In this case, we have two good reasons to be skeptical. First, we should always be skeptical. Second, claims of transfer rarely hold up.

What is “transfer”?

Well, if you teach me calculus, then it’s likely I’ll get better at calculus. If you teach me to play the violin, it’s likely I’ll get better at playing the violin. But: if you teach me to play the violin, it’s NOT likely that this skill will transfer to another skill — like calculus. (And, no: music training in youth doesn’t reliably improve math ability later in life.)

In fact, most claims of transfer — “teaching you X makes you better at distantly-related-thing A” — end up being untrue.

So, is it true — as this newspaper headline implied — that handwriting skills transfer to reading skills?

The Research

This newspaper article pointed to research by Dr. Anabela Malpique, working in Western Australia.

Her research team worked with 154 6-7 year-olds around Perth. They measured all sorts of variables, including…

…the students’ handwriting automaticity (how well can they write individual letters),

…their reading skills (how accurately they read individual words),

…the amount of time the teachers reported spending in reading/writing instruction.

And, they measured handwriting automaticity and reading skills at the beginning and end of the year. For that reason, they could look for relationships among their variables over time. (As you can see, Malpique’s research focuses on many topics — not just the writing/reading question that I’m discussing in this post.)

Tentative Conclusions

To their surprise, Malpique’s team found that more fluent letter formation at the beginning of the year predicted more fluent word reading at the end of the year. In their words, this finding

suggest[s] that being able to write letters quickly and effortlessly in kindergarten facilitates pre-reading and decoding skills one year later.

In other words: this research allows the possibility that teaching writing does ultimately help students read single words.

However — and this is a big however — the researchers’ methodology does NOT allow for causal conclusions. They see a mathematical “relationship” between two things, but don’t say that the writing ability led to later reading ability.

They warn:

Experimental research is needed to confirm these findings[,] and systematically evaluate potential explanatory mechanism[s] of writing-to-reading effects over time in the early years.

They specifically note that they did NOT measure reading comprehension; they measured single word reading.

To put this in other words: we would like to know if

a) teaching letter writing leads to

b) improved letter writing fluency, which leads to

c) improved single word reading, which leads to

d) improved reading comprehension.

These findings make the b) to c) connection more plausible, but the certainly do not “prove” that a) leads to d).

Classroom Implications

This research doesn’t claim we should make big changes right away.

I do think it leads to this conclusion:

Some schools are replacing books with computers and tablets. I can imagine (although I haven’t heard this) that advocates might make this claim:

“In the future, no one will need to write by hand. Everything will be keyboarding, and so we need to get children typing as soon as possible. Let’s replace handwriting instruction with keyboarding instruction, to prepare our kids for the future!”

If we hear that argument, we can say:

“I have LOTS of objections to that logical chain. In particular, we have tentative reasons to believe that handwriting instruction improves reading. If that’s true — and we don’t yet know — we should be VERY wary of doing anything that slows our students’ ability to read. We might not be handwriting so much in the future, but we’ll be reading forever.”

In sum: I don’t think that newspaper article captured essential nuances. However, this research raises the intriguing possibility that transfer just might take place from writing instruction to single-word reading. We need more research to know with greater certainty.

But, given the importance of reading for school and life, we should be excited to find anything that can help students do better.

The Big Six: A Grand Summary
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-08-2020

The Big Six: A Grand Summary

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Much of the time, this blog digs into a specific example of a specific teaching practice.

Within the last two weeks, I’ve written about spacing and interleaving in math instruction, a “big challenging book” strategy for struggling readers, and the potential benefits of cold calling.

At times, however, it’s helpful to zoom the camera back and look at THE BIG PICTURE.

What does cognitive science tell us about learning?

Today’s Grand Summary

Regular readers know that The Learning Scientists do a GREAT job explaining…well…the science of learning.

In particular, they focus on “six strategies of effective learning”:

Spacing

Interleaving

Retrieval Practice

Concrete Examples

Elaboration

Dual Coding

In a recent post, Dr. Megan Sumeracki does a typically helpful job giving a thoughtful overview of those strategies. Rather than summarize her summary, I’m encouraging you to give her post a quick read. It will help put the pieces together for you.

Wise Caveats

Sumeracki introduces her summary with this helpful note:

Before digging into the specifics of each strategy, it is important to note that they are very flexible. This is a good thing, in that it means they can be used in a lot of different situations.

However, this also means that there really isn’t a specific prescription we can provide that will “always work.”

Instead, understanding the strategies and how they work can help instructors and students. [Emphasis added.]

In other words — as you often read on this blog — “don’t just do this thing; instead, think this way.”

Cognitive science really cannot provide a script for teachers to read verbatim. Instead, it offers principles that we must adapt to our own specific classrooms and students.

So, if you increase spacing and retrieval practice, your students will — almost certainly — remember more over the long term. But: exactly how to do that will differ from classroom to classroom, grade to grade, culture to culture.

In other words: teachers should draw on scientific understanding of minds and brains to shape our work. But: teaching itself isn’t a science. It’s a craft, a passion, a profession.

Cold Calling and Bad Pizza
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-05-2020

Cold Calling and Bad Pizza

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When I was in grad school, a well-known professor announced that — given everything we know about the effects of stress — it is professional malpractice to “cold call” on students. (To “cold call” means to call on a student who hasn’t raised her hand.)

Imagine the cascade of bad results.

When cold-called, the student feels stress. Cortisol levels go up. Excess cortisol interferes with learning. In fact, long-term excess cortisol damages the hippocampus. (You can check out this video here.)

My professor’s claim struck me as shocking, because Doug Lemov argues so strongly for cold calling in his much admired Teach Like a Champion:

“If I was working with a group of teachers and had to help them make the greatest possible improvements in the rigor, ratio, and level of expectations in their classroom with one technique, the technique I’d choose might well be cold call.”

That is: if we want students themselves to be doing cognitive work — a.k.a. “active learning” — Lemov thinks cold calling is the way to go. It serves four key functions:

First, it lets the teacher check students’ understanding,

Second, it creates a culture of “engaged accountability,”

Third, it helps the teacher speed up or slow down the pace, and

Fourth, it supplements other teaching strategies, like “turn and talk.”

Little wonder Lemov champions it so heartily.

Breaking the Tie?

We’ve got an expert in the neurobiology of stress saying cold calling is professional malpractice. We’ve got an expert in classroom teaching saying that cold calling is profession best practice.

How to we decide?

On this blog, we try always to find relevant research. In this case, the best study I can find was undertaken by Dallimore, Hertenstein, and Platt.

Team Dallimore — aware of both sides of this debate — looked at 16 sections of a college accounting course, including well over 600 students.

They kept track of the professors’ discussion techniques: in particular, did they cold call or not?

And, they followed a number of variables: in particular, how much did students voluntarily participate? And, how comfortable were the students in class discussion? (In other words: what happened to those cortisol levels my professor worried about?)

If the answers to those questions show a clear pattern, that might help us decide to follow my prof’s guidance, or Lemov’s.

The Envelope Please

In brief: cold calling produced good thinking results, and lowered (apparent) stress levels.

That is: in classes with infrequent cold calling, students’ voluntary participation remained the same throughout the term. In classes with high cold calling, their voluntary participation rose from 68% to 86%.

Dallimore’s team saw the same results with the number of questions students volunteered to answer. That number remained flat in the low cold calling classes, and rose in the high cold calling classes.

And, how about stress?

When asked to report their comfort level with class discussion, that level remained constant in low cold calling sections. Comfort levels rose in high cold calling sections.

So: when teachers cold called, their students voluntarily participated more, and they felt more comfortable in class.

Always with the Limitations

Dallimore’s study — combined with Lemov’s insight, guidance, and wisdom — suggests that cold calling really can benefit students.

However, any good teaching technique can be used badly. If it’s possible to make a bad pizza, it’s possible to make a bad version of any great thing.

So, if we’ve got students who have experienced ongoing trauma, we should make reasonable accommodations. If a student has an IEP that warns against cold calling, we should — of course! — heed that warning.

Also, I should acknowledge the limitations of this research. The study I’ve described was published in 2012, and it’s the most recent one I have located. Simply put: we don’t have much research on the topic.

And: research done with accounting students — most of whom are college sophomores — might not apply to your students.

Of course, Lemov works mostly with K-12 students, especially those who attend schools that have relatively high poverty rates. In other words: Dallimore’s research + Lemov’s research shows a wide range of effectiveness for this technique.

In sum: I’m sure teachers can use cold calling techniques badly — resulting in raised stress and reduced learning. But, done well, this technique offers real benefits.

If we create a respectful, supportive, and challenging classroom climate — including cold call — students can learn splendidly. This video shows the technique in action.

Training in Effective Skepticism: Retraction Watch
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March-01-2020

Training in Effective Skepticism: Retraction Watch

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When we teachers first get interested in research, we regularly hear this word of caution: “you should base your teaching on research — but be skeptical!”

Of course, we should be skeptical. But, like every skill, skepticism requires practice. And experience.

How can we best practice our skepticism?

The Company We Keep

Of course, the more time we spend listening to effective skeptics, the likelier we are to learn from their methodologies.

Many well-known sources frequently explore the strengths and weaknesses of research suggestions.

Dan Willingham regularly takes a helpfully skeptical view of research. (He’s also a regular, amusing twitter voice.)

Ditto The Learning Scientists.

Certainly this blog takes on the topic frequently.

Today, I’d like to add to your skepticism repertoire: Retraction Watch.

Unlike the other sources I mentioned, Retraction Watch doesn’t focus on education particularly. Instead, it takes in the full range of scientific research — focusing specifically on published research that has been (or should be?) retracted.

If you get in the habit of reading their blog, you’ll learn more about the ways that researchers can dissemble — even cheat — on their way to publication. And, the ways that their deceptions are unmasked.

You’ll also learn how much research relies on trust, and the way that such trust can be violated. That is: sometimes researchers retract their work when they learn a colleague — without their knowledge — fudged the data.

In brief, if you’d like to tune up your skepticism chops, Retraction Watch will help you do so.

And: the topic might sound a bit dry. But, when you get into the human stories behind the clinical sounding “retraction,” you’ll be fascinated.

Back in December, I wrote about another website that can help you see if a study has been cited, replicated, or contradicted. You can read about that here.

Are “Retrieval Practice” and “Spacing” Equally Important? [Updated]
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
February-28-2020

Are “Retrieval Practice” and “Spacing” Equally Important? [Updated]

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If you follow research in the world of long-term memory, you know you’ve got SO MANY GOOD STRATEGIES.

Agarwal and Bain’s Powerful Teaching, for instance, offers a delicious menu: spacing, interleaving, retrieval practice, metacognition.

Inquiring minds want to know: how do we best choose among those options? Should we do them all? Should we rely mostly on one, and then add in dashes of the other three? What’s the idea combination?

One Important Answer

Dr. Keith Lyle and his research team wanted to know: which strategy has greater long-term impact in teaching college math: retrieval practice or spacing?

That is: in the long term, do students benefit from more retrieval? From greater spacing? From both?

To answer this really important question, they carefully designed weekly quizzes in a college precalculus class. Some topics, at “baseline,” were tested with three questions at the end of the week. That’s a little retrieval practice, and a few days of spacing.

Some topics were tested with six quiz questions at the end of the week. That’s MORE retrieval practice, but the same baseline amount of spacing.

Some topics were tested with three quiz questions spread out over the semester. That’s baseline retrieval practice, but MUCH GREATER spacing.

And, some topics were tested with six quiz questions spread out over the semester. That’s extra retrieval AND extra spacing.

They then measured: how did these precalculus students do when tested on those topics on the final exam? And — hold on you hats — how did they do when tested a month later, when they started taking the follow-up class on calculus?

Intriguing Answers…

Lyle and Co. found that — on the precalculus final exam…

…extra retrieval practice helped (about 4% points), and

…extra spacing helped (about 4% points), and

…combining extra retrieval with extra spacing helped more (about 8% points).

So, in the relatively short term, both strategies enhance learning. And, they complement each other.

What about the relatively longer term? That is, what happened a month later, on the pre-test for the calculus class? In that case…

…extra retrieval practice didn’t matter

…extra spacing helped (about 4% points).

…combining extra retrieval with extra spacing produced no extra benefit (still about 4% points).**

For enduring learning, then, extra spacing helped, but extra retrieval practice didn’t.

…Important Considerations

First: as the researchers note, it’s important to stress that this research comes from the field of math instruction. Math — more than most disciplines — already has retrieval practice built into in.

That is: when I do math homework, every problem I solve requires me (to some degree) to recall the math task at hand. (And, probably, lots of other relevant math info as well.)

But, when I do my English homework, the paper I’m writing about Macbeth might not remind me about Grapes of Wrath. Or, when I do my History homework, the time I spend studying Aztec civilization doesn’t necessarily require me to recall facts or concepts from the Silk Road unit. (It might, but might not.)

So, this study shows that extra retrieval practice didn’t help over and above the considerable retrieval practice the math students were already doing.

Second: notice that the “spacing” in this case was a special kind of spacing. It was, in fact, spacing of retrieval practice. Of course, that counts as spacing.

But, we have lots of other ways to space as well. For instance, Dr. Rachael Blasiman testing spacing by taking time in lectures to revisit earlier concepts. That strategy did create spacing, but didn’t include retrieval practice.

So, this research doesn’t necessarily apply to other kinds of spacing. It might, but we don’t yet know.

Practical Classroom Applications

Lyle & Co.’s study gives us three helpful classroom reminders.

First: as long as we’ve done enough retrieval practice to establish ideas (as math homework does almost automatically), we can redouble our energies to focus on spacing.

Second: Lyle mentions in passing that students do (very slightly) worse on quizzes that include spacing — because spacing is harder. (Regular readers know, we call this “desirable difficulty.”)

This reminder gives us an extra reason to be sure that quizzes with spacing are low-stakes or no-stakes. We don’t want to penalize students for participating in learning strategies that benefit them.

Third: In my own view, we can ask/expect our students to join us in retrieval practice strategies. Once they reach a certain age or grade, they should be able to make flashcards, or use quizlet, or test one another.

However, I think spacing requires a different perspective on the full scope of a course. That is: it requires a teacher’s perspective. We have the long view, and see how all the pieces best fit together.

For those reasons, I think we can (and should) ask students to do retrieval practice (in addition to the retrieval practice we create). But, we ourselves should take responsibility for spacing. We — much more than they they — have the big picture in mind. We should take that task off their to do list, and keep it squarely on ours.

** This post has been revised on 3/7/30. The initial version did not include the total improvement created by retrieval practice and spacing one month after the final exam.

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