Category Archives: L&B Blog

Teachers, of course, ask students questions. ALL THE TIME with the questions.

We ask questions DURING a lesson in order to “check for understanding.”

We encourage students to ask themselves questions AFTER class, because “retrieval practice” promotes learning.

And, we ask questions BEFORE a unit — for at least two very good reasons.

In the first place, we need to know what our students already know. If we don’t evaluate their prior knowledge, we struggle to build on that prior knowledge in a coherent way.

In the second place, we have increasingly strong research about the benefits of “prequestions.”

Unlike “checks for understanding” and “retrieval practice,” “prequestions” come before the unit.

And unlike “measuring prior knowledge,” “prequestions” deliberately focus on facts and procedures that students don’t yet know.

So: if I’m teaching a unit on Their Eyes Were Watching God, I might ask my students:

“What is the definition of a ‘bildungsroman’?”

“Describe the friendship between Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen.”

“What does hair often symbolize in literature?”

Truth to tell, it’s quite unlikely that my 10th grade students know the answers to these questions. So: those are prequestions — not checks for understanding, or retrival practice, or confirmations of prior knowledge.

Here’s the headline: we have reason to believe that “prequestions” — used correctly — help students learn information.

Here’s the story…

Hot Off the Presses

Long-time readers know that Dr. Elizabeth Ligon Bjork has done LOTS of essential work in the field of long-term memory formation and “desireable difficulties.”

And, you know my admiration of Dr. Nick Soderstrom, whose distinction between “short-term performance” and “long-term learning” should inform all teachers’ discussions.

So: when the two work together, they have my attention!

In this case, they JUST published a study on the topic of “prequestions.”

And, this study took place in actual college classrooms — not simply in a psychology lab. For that reason, its conclusions have a better chance of applying to the real-world work that other teachers do in classrooms.

In this research, students answered prequestions at the beginning of a few lectures. The subsequent lectures then provided answers to those questions. (By the way: students got only about 1/3 of those prequestions right — so for the most part they didn’t know the answers.)

On the final exam, students had to answer questions that …

… DIRECTLY related to those prequestions, or

… INDIRECTLY related to those prequestions, or

… were NOT related to the prequestions.

Sure enough, they did better on both directly and indirectly related questions, compared to the unrelated questions.

In brief: prequestions really did help college students learn in the classroom.

So simple! So effective!

So, Those “Details”?

My title promises that we need to “get the details just right.” In this case, as in so many others, I have thoughts. (Important note: at this point, I’m switching from reporting on research to offering my experience-based opinions.)

First Thought

Soderstrom and Bjork specifically write that prequestions helped because students took them seriously.

Here’s my concern: while college students may have the metacognitive perspective to take prequestions seriously, I do worry that younger students might not.

That is: once younger students realize that their answers to these questions don’t really matter, they might not take them as seriously as their college-age selves would.

The structure of prequestions, in fact, might discourage seriousness. Students rarely know the answers to these questions — that’s the point. Why would students attend seriously to questions they can’t possibly answer?

This potential problem leads to two tentative suggestions:

TELL students how and why prequestions might help, and

Use prequestions only RARELY.

After all, the more often that students must answer un-answerable questions, the less likely they are to give them appropriate mental effort.

My hope is: students who encounter prequestions only rarely won’t get cynical about trying to answer them.

Second Thought

If we use prequestions only rarely, are some times better than others?

My instincts are: yes.

Simply put: use prequestions at the beginning of a unit to highlight the most important concepts.

If we can get the benefit of this technique only rarely, then use it at the most important times.

This advice comes from common sense, not  from research — but common sense isn’t entirely forbidden on this blog.

Third Thought

Not all prequestions are created equal.

If a prequestion forces a student to think — that’s a good prequestion: even if they get a wrong answer.

However, if a prequestion activates a prior misconception, that question will actively interfere with learning.

For that reason, we should follow this rule:

Ask prequestions where students don’t know what the answer is, and where they don’t wrongly believe that they do know what the answer is.

For instance:

If I ask my student “which falls faster: a 10-pound bowling ball or a 15-pound bowling ball,” they almost certainly …

… don’t know the correct answer (that’s good), but

… wrongly think that they DO know the correct answer (that’s bad).

So: that prequestion would activate a prior misconception — and make learning harder.

On the other hand, those prequestions I asked at the top of this post (definition of “bildungsroman”) almost certainly don’t active prior misconceptions.

A Secret Unveiled; A Plea for Teamwork

I confess I have one deep frustration with this research pool.

Almost all teachers — and all students — hate tests.

So: if I name something “the testing effect,” teachers and students will HATE it — even if it’s beneficial. (Hint: the “testing effect” is just another way of talking about “retrieval practice.”)

And, if I name something “pretesting,” teachers and students will HATE it — even if it’s beneficial. Pretesting sounds like a test, no?

Sure enough, researchers have named a beneficial teaching “pretesting,” thereby ensuring confusion, and discouraging its use.

But — of course — “pretesting” simply means “asking questions on a topic before you’ve taught the material.” It’s NOT A TEST. It’s just a set of QUESTIONS.

So, I’ve been writing about “prequestions,” although everyone else in this field calls them “pretests.”

I hope you’ll join me in this virtuous rebranding.

TL;DR

Prequestions (aka “pretesting”) help students learn new material — and not just the information in the questions themselves.

Because the technique works if students take it seriously, I suggest …

… using it rarely,

… using it for important material, and

… asking prequestions that DON’T activate prior misconceptions.

Soderstrom, N. C., & Bjork, E. L. (2023). Pretesting Enhances Learning in the Classroom. Educational Psychology Review, 35(3), 88.

In schools, optimism helps teachers a lot.

At the beginning of the year, my students JUST DON’T KNOW all sorts of things: how to write a good essay; how to analyze Macbeth; how to define “gerund.”

In all likelihood, your students don’t know things too.

Because I’m often an optimist, I trust that — by the end of the year — they WILL KNOW all those things, and lots more. So, I suspect, are you.

Our optimism prevents despair. (“They’ll just never learn the …”)

At times, however, that optimism can build unreasonable hopes and expectations.

For instance:

I hear a GREAT DEAL of enthusisam about the concept of teaching students “to learn how to learn.”

If students know all the cool stuff that we discuss at Learning and the Brain conferences, surely their academic lives will be better.

The optimist in me says: “that sounds GREAT.” The realist in me says: “I want to slow down and ask some pointed questions…”

A Core Principle

I make my living by explaining cognitive science to teachers. I talk about working memory and attention and retrieval practice and prior misconceptions and executive attention…the list goes on.

When I think about explaining cognitive science to students, I return to this vital question:

Realistically speaking, can students DO SOMETHING with this information?

If the realistic answer to that question (have I written “realistic” often enough?) is not an emphatic “YES,” then I’m very hesitant about sharing it.

For example: retrieval practice.

By now, this blog’s readers know that actively calling information to mind (“retrieval practice”) enhances learning — especially when compared with rereading (“simple review”).

I could link to dozens of sources, but — to keep things simple — I’ll simply highlight this book review, and this website.

Obviously, we teachers should use as much retrieval practice as we reasonably can.

But: should we tell our students about retrieval practice, so they can “learn how to learn”?

Let’s go back to my guiding principle:

Realistically speaking, can students DO SOMETHING with information about retrieval practice?

Well: obviously YES.

Students can…

… make flashcards

… quiz one another (rather than review their notes)

… outline a chapter from memory (rather than reread the chapter).

Students have ALL SORTS of ways to make retrieval practice their own, and to benefit from it.

So, it makes sense to tell students about this part of cognitive science.

In truth, I tell my students about retrieval practice at the beginning of every year. (I once had a student THANK ME for doing so much retrieval practice. No, I’m not making that up.)

In this specific case, students can absolutely “learn how to learn.”

Next Question

If students should learn about retrieval practice, what about other “desireable difficulties”? What about — for example — spacing and interleaving?

You know the drill:

Realistically speaking, can students DO SOMETHING with information about spacing and interleaving?

Honestly, I have my doubts.

Students have relatively little control over their practice schedule. They practice when their homework requires them to do so.

In other words: they can’t simply decide to do half their “gerund” exercises tonight and half later in the week. They have to do them when I assign them.

So: it’s on me (and other teachers) to design our syllabi to space and interleave practice.

But, for the most part, students can’t do much with this information, so I don’t make a big deal about it with them. (I’m relieved to know that Bradley K. Busch largely agrees with me on this point.)

Yes: students should probably know about spacing and interleaving so that they can manage their college study habits well. But until they get to college, that information doesn’t offer them much practical guidance (except in unusual circumstances).

And the next…

Sadly, I think most information from cognitive science fits in this latter category.

That is: TEACHERS should know about working memory. (Teachers should obsess about working memory.)

But, I don’t think students can do much with information on this topic.

That is: when they’re experiencing working memory overload, they don’t have enough working memory left to get metacognitive about working memory reduction strategies.

The potential solution, paradoxically, exacerbates the problem.

Heck, it took me YEARS to figure out how to apply my knowledge of working memory limitations to my teaching. It seems somehow unfair to ask students to accomplish a task that challenged me so greatly.

Heretically, I don’t think that students really need to know much about mindsets either. Instead, I think TEACHERS and SCHOOLS should create policies and practices with this theory in mind.

Those mindset posters probably don’t do any harm.

But if they’re not enacted by the teachers’ words and decisions, that contradiction makes the students’ knowledge useless.

Telling students about mindsets (probably) doesn’t help them learn how to learn. Behaving and speaking as if we have a growth mindset helps students learn.

An Alternative Perspective

I’ll say all this in a different way: I believe teachers have a distinct and vital role in students’ learning.

Students have their work to do — obviously. And we have ours.

Those two roles sometimes overlap. But just as often, they remain distinct.

We should know our subject.

And, we should know from cognitive science.

In those few cases (retrieval practice!) where students can use that knowledge immediately, we should eagerly share it with them.

In the more common cases where they can’t (e.g.: Posner’s tripartite theory of attention; dopytocin), we should put it to use, but not burden students with extraneous cognitive load.

This perspective might not be uplifting and optimistic, but I hope its realism will ultimately help my students learn better.