Memory plays a central role in our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks but many common study habits turn out to be counter-productive. Rereading text books is ‘often labour in vain’ even if picking up a textbook, revision guide or old exercise book and simply reading it again is the number one study strategy of many students. Unfortunately this re-reading is time consuming, does not result in durable memory and often involves a kind of “unwitting self-deception” – where pupils confuse growing familiarity with the content with mastery of the content. The ideas expressed below are based on the influential ‘Make it stick: The Science of Successful Learning’ by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel (Harvard University Press, 2014)

Retrieval practice - recalling facts or concepts or events from memory - is a more effective learning strategy than review by rereading.  Retrieval strengthens the memory and interrupts forgetting. For example, a single simple quiz after a lesson produces better learning and remembering than rereading a text book. Testing should therefore be used as a learning tool as opposed to an end goal or summative assessment.  One of the most interesting features of research findings is the power of active retrieval “testing” to strengthen memory, and that the more effortful the retrieval then stronger the benefit.  The act of retrieving learning from memory has two significant benefits. Firstly, it tells you what you know and don’t know and therefore to focus further study where you are weak.  Secondly, recalling what you have learned causes your brain to reconsolidate the memory, which strengthens its connections to what you already know and makes it easy to recall in the future. 

If we want our students to learn key content within a specification we should test them on it regularly.  Such testing experiences need to be low risk, frequent and designed to include variation.  Students seem to enjoy this type of exercise so long as you make the rationale visible, explaining to them why you are doing it and the theory behind it.  In addition, because testing helps is to identify whether we have learned and understood key information we have been studying, it provides a useful meta-cognitive insight. This means that students become more aware of what they know and what they do not know and regular testing helps them become more self-aware of their own learning and able to plan the focus of future revision sessions. 

Finally, many students put off revision until exam time nears and then cram their revision. It’s a common but mistaken belief that you can burn something into memory through sheer repetition in a short period of time. Lots of practice works, but only if it’s spaced. Regular opportunities to review and reduce notes, revise key topics and test your understanding need to be built into a GCSE or A level course. In our efforts to cover the specification, we can jump from topic to topic, ensuring pupils are familiar with each topic and then moving on.  Typically though, learners forget a good deal of the information we encounter within a few days of learning it.  Ebbinghaus’s curve of forgetting demonstrates that without review there is a rapid decline in recall. To make learning ‘stick’ we need to regularly revisit what has been learned earlier.

See example Page KP6-a