Occasionally I try to persuade people that neuroscience is fantastically complicated. In other words: we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if we don’t master it all.
Today I spotted a headline that makes my point for me:
Hippocampus-driven feed-forward inhibition of the prefrontal cortex mediates relapse of extinguished fear
Got that?
What’s the Bigger Point?
Neuroscience is simply fascinating. As teachers, we really want to know how neurons work. And synapses. And brain regions — like the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
However, specific teaching advice almost always comes from psychology. How do teachers help students connect neurons to create memories? Psychology. What classroom strategies support executive function in the prefrontal cortex? Psychology.
At a LatB Conference, you’ll enjoy the neuroscience talks because they show you what’s going on underneath the hood. At the psychology talks, you’ll get specific classroom suggestions.
The best conference experience, in my opinion, combines both.
Given all the benefits that come from retrieval practice, we should surely encourage our students to use this technique as much as possible. How can we best motivate them to do so?
Three researchers in Europe offer this answer: subtly.
More specifically, their research finds that offering students extrinsic rewards for their retrieval practice reduced its effectiveness.
Students offered rewards made more mistakes when they first tried to recall information, and–even taking those initial errors into account–remembered less than their fellow students who had received no enticement to practice.
In this study, the extrinsic rewards were cash payments: students received a euro for every correct answer. In schools, we rarely pay students money to get correct answers. However, we quite often pay them with grades.
This study suggests that retrieval practice should–as much as possible–come in the form of very-low-stakes or no-stakes retrieval.
As schools focus more on STEM disciplines, teachers strive to help our students master complex STEM concepts.
After all, it’s hard enough to say “magnetic anisotrophy,” much less understand what it is.
Researchers Dane DeSutter and Mike Stieff have several suggestions for teachers. Specifically, they argue that spatial thinking–essential to many STEM concepts–can be enhanced by appropriate gestures.
Recent entries on this blog have focused on the kind of practice that helps students learn best.
(Hint: it rhymes with “retrieval schmactrice.”)
What can researchers tell us about the schedule of that practice?
Imagine that my students are studying three different grammar topics: direct and indirect objects, predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives, and prepositional phrases. How should I organize the practice problems on the syllabus?
Jumbling practice problems?
I might put those practice problems in chunks: all the in/direct object questions, then all the PN and PA problems, and then the prep phrase problems. (Psychologists call this schedule “blocking,” because students are practicing in blocks.)
Or, I might jumble all the practice problems together: a prep phrase question followed by an indirect object question followed by a predicate adjective problem. (The technical term here is “interleaving.”)
Which schedule works better?
And, does that schedule help both factual learning (grammar) and motor learning (tennis)?
This brief video, starring Bob Bjork, has the answers:
Back in October, I posted a link to a pro-homework argument. Again today, I’ve stumbled across another–this one summarizing John Hattie’s Visible Learning on the subject.
Author Tom Sherrington makes two general points.
First: the question “does homework help students learn” is too broad. We need to narrow it down. What age student are we discussing? What kind of homework are they doing? What discipline are they studying?
This first point is often worth making. If someone asks you, “Is technology good for learning?” remember that the question is too big to answer sensibly. Likewise: “does gender matter for learning?” Or “can we train brains?”
Research can answer narrow question very well. The bigger the question, the less certain our answer.
Second: the brief answer to the question is: homework is helpful for older students, but not for younger ones.
Of course, as outlined above, that brief answer requires lots of elaboration.
I’ve posted a lot here recently about retrieval practice: the practice of reviewing material by pulling it OUT of the student’s head rather than trying to put it back IN.
For example: if I ask my students to write down the 5 main points from yesterday’s class about the Buddha, that’s retrieval practice. They have to get info out of their heads.
If, instead, I remind them of the 5 main points from yesterday’s class, that’s not retrieval practice. After all, I’m putting information back in.
The short sales pitch for retrieval practice is: it works for all students in all subjects, all the time. (Ask Dr. Pooja Agarwal.)
Unless…
Of course, all students in all subjects all the time is quite a grand claim. It’s rare for any teaching practice to work all the time, so we should be on the lookout for boundary conditions.
And, indeed, one has recently jumped out at me.
The story is interestingly complicated. I promise, however, that a close study of this complexity leads to specific and useful teaching advice. So: hang in there!
When Retrieval Practice Timing Might Be Bad
Imagine that, in yesterday’s class, we went over ten definitions for key economics terms. I want to begin today’s class with a quick review, so we go back over five of those terms.
My assumption is that, by reviewing five, I’m actually helping you to remember all ten.
Here’s the surprising research finding: by practicing some of the terms, I actually make it LESS LIKELY that you’ll remember the unpracticed terms.
In other words: recalling some of the words prompts you to forget the unpracticed words.
Psychologists call this bizarre result retrieval-induced forgetting. After all, the retrieval — that is, the practice — induced you to forget.
When Research Fields Contradict
So: the retrieval practice research says that retrieval is beneficial for memory.
And: the retrieval-induced forgetting research says that retrieval is detrimental for memory.
What happens when teachers do both? Does one cancel out the other? Can Superman defeat Iron Man?
Research done by Jason CK Chan helps answer this intriguing question.
The short answer is: in the short term, retrieval-induced forgetting is stronger. So: if I quiz you on five of those economics terms, and then give you the final test on those terms an hour later, you’re more likely to forget the five unpracticed words.
However, in the longer term, retrieval practice is stronger. So: the quiz on five terms will benefit you if you take that final test 24 hours later.
This result is especially likely if my quiz encourages you to think about how these five words connect conceptually to the other words.
Practical Advice
Although these research findings can be difficult to follow, they do all lead to a specific suggestion.
Retrieval practice is an excellent study strategy for students more than 24 hours ahead of a test. However, within that 24 hour window, teachers and students should focus more on connecting ideas rather than recalling them.
To update Dr. Agarwal’s guidance: retrieval practice works for all students in all subjects, (almost) all the time.
You’d like to remember a list of words better? Here’s a simple trick: say them aloud to yourself.
According to recent research by Forrin and MacLeod, the benefits of both reading and saying words out loud are greater than either reading or saying the words.
When going over flashcards of essential chemistry terms — for example — students might say the definitions as they review them. This strategy should help them learn those definitions better.
Practical limitations of saying words aloud
As I think about the teaching implications of this research, I don’t think we should encourage students to read everything aloud. (Except, of course, students who are learning to read.)
Instead, we should suggest this technique as a study supplement for a few key concepts: the definitions or formulas that we most want them to learn.
This strategy takes little time and costs nothing. In other words, it’s perfect for the world of education.
The Effortful Educator describes his fun system for using highlighters during retrieval practice. He teaches AP Psychology in high school, but I suspect this system could be easily used with younger students as well.
EE’s lesson plan stands out for two reasons.
First: it’s a great example of retrieval practice — asking students to pull information out of their brains rather than trying to put more information in.
Second: it’s a great example of translation. EE knows the research about retrieval practice–he’s a psychology teacher after all. In this case, he’s gone well beyond simply replicating methods used by psychology teachers. Instead, he’s thought carefully about the uses of that idea in his particular context, and he’s translated the research to make it work for his students.
In other words: you might emulate the Effortful Educator’s specific strategy of using different colored highlighters. You should emulate his general strategy of adapting psychology to your classroom, your students, and your own approaches to teaching.
This brief (and admirably clear) article offers guidance to college students on the study strategies that have research support — and, helpfully, those that don’t.
The authors offer a few sources to verify their claims, explain why some counter-intuitive strategies work better that more traditional ones, and even toss in a few un-researched but entirely plausible suggestions.
(One minor disagreement: the authors cite the Mueller & Oppenheimer study to discourage laptop note-taking. Regular readers of the blog know I think that study doesn’t support its own conclusions.)
In a recent interview on this blog, Dr. Pooja K. Agarwal spoke about the benefits of retrieval practice: a study technique that–in her words–focuses on pulling information OUT of students’ brains rather than getting it back IN.
For example: if I begin today’s class by having my students write down three things they remember from yesterday’s lesson on the Han dynasty, that’s retrieval practice. After all, they’re going back into their memories and drawing OUT facts and ideas we discussed.
If, however, I begin by briefly summarizing yesterday’s class, well, then I’m trying to put information back IN. That’s not retrieval practice.
Dr. Agarwal summarizes the benefits of retrieval practice thus: “it works for all students in all subjects, all the time.”
Sounds tempting, no?
Pushing Boundaries
In one part of our conversation, Dr. Aragwal notes that she likes doing research in actual classrooms with actual students–rather than in psychology labs in highly controlled conditions–because “I really like the messiness of of doing scientific research in classrooms. The fire alarms, and school assemblies, and kids who are out sick, I really enjoy it because it pushes boundaries.”
In the spirit of messiness, here’s a recent post from the Learning Scientists about using retrieval practice in elementary school to learn vocabulary.
The good news about this study:
First: it took place in a real school with real students, not in a psychology lab. That means its results are likelier to be meaningful to teachers.
Second: the participants were 9-year-olds, not college students. So, we can be more confident that retrieval practice works with…say…4th graders.
Third: the study took place in the Netherlands, so we’ve got reason to believe that the benefits go beyond a North American cultural context.
So far, so good.
Let the Messiness Begin
At the same time, this particular study revealed a few muddles as well.
Muddle #1: the size of the benefit was relatively small. Retrieval practice produced more learning than simple restudy, and more than “elaborative retrieval,” but statistically speaking that difference was harder to find than in a psychology lab.
Muddle #2: Dr. Agarwal’s research shows that fill-in-the-blank retrieval practice and multiple-choice retrieval practice are equally effective. This study, however, contradicts that finding; multiple-choice retrieval didn’t produce more learning than pure restudy.
Muddle #3: believe it or not, muddle #3 contradicts muddle #2. Because of the study design, the authors acknowledge that their own findings about multiple-choice tests aren’t fully persuasive. For example: because the average score on the multiple-choice tests was above a 90%, there wasn’t enough difference among the students’ scores to calculate meaningful effects.
What should teachers do with all this contradictory information?
My advice: Embrace the muddle.
Teachers should expect that different studies produce muddled–and occasionally contradictory–results.
No one study tells us everything we need to know about retrieval practice. Instead, we’re looking for patterns of findings.
If we do ten studies, and eight of them show that retrieval practice helps learning, that’s impressive. We don’t need to be thrown off by one study that shows no effect–or, as in this case, a relatively smaller effect than in a psych lab.
The Quiet Finding
Although the authors don’t dwell on this point, one finding jumped out at me.
In one of the restudy conditions, students were asked to “elaborate” on the meaning of the word. For example, as they tried to remember “compost pile,” they were asked to circle the words relating to a compost pile on this list: manure, plastic, delicious, orange-peels, mailbox, dead leaves.
My teacherly instincts tell me that this restudy condition ought to help students. After all, to circle the correct words, they have to think a bit harder about the meaning of the phrase “compost pile.” That additional thought strikes me as a desirable difficulty, and ought to produce more learning.
But–at least in this one study–it didn’t. Students who “elaboratively restudied” scored between the “pure restudy” group and the “retrieval practice” group–and their scores weren’t significantly different from either.
The Take-Aways…
I myself reach three conclusions based on this research:
A) Yup: retrieval practice still works, even with 4th graders, even with vocabulary learning, even in the Netherlands.
B) My instincts about elaborative restudy might be off. I should keep my eyes peeled for further research.
C) The muddle isn’t disheartening, it’s enjoyable. Jump in–the water’s warm!
