By Dr. Rob McEntarffer and Dr. Bethany Brunsman

Rob McEntarffer taught English, psychology, and philosophy for 13 years at Lincoln Southeast high school in Lincoln, NE. While teaching, he became interested in educational measurement issues and got a Masters degree in educational measurement from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 2003. He started working as an Assessment/Evaluation specialist with Lincoln Public Schools in 2005, and works with the district on large scale and classroom assessment issues. Rob earned his PhD in Teaching, Learning, and Teacher education in 2013, focusing his research on how teachers make room for formative assessment processes in their classrooms. He lives with his wife, two kids, dog, and cat in Lincoln, NE and works for Lincoln Public Schools.

Bethany Brunsman has been an Assessment/Evaluation Specialist with Lincoln Public schools since 2000 and works with assessment and data reporting/use. She has a Ph.D. in psychology and Master of Arts degrees in psychology and educational measurement and statistics from the University of Iowa. 

NOTE: This post is the third in a series of Learning Scientists blog posts about how teachers can use what we know through cognitive psychology to optimize student use of feedback. The two previous posts, “Memorable Feedback: Lessons from Cognitive Psychology in Selective Attention” and “Memorable Feedback: Lessons from Cognitive Psychology in Encoding,” focused on the role of selective attention and encoding. This post discusses retrieval practice.

As assessment specialists in a large public school district, our jobs involve working with teachers to develop useful classroom assessments and use assessment data to help students learn. Along the way, we’ve found two bodies of literature to be useful during conversations with teachers: cognitive psychology literature related to memory models, and assessment literature related to effective feedback. The purpose of this series of blog posts is to highlight three potentially useful connections between these research areas:  selective attention, encoding/deep processing, and retrieval practice (this post).

Review of the Memory Model

Several different models of human memory are used in the literature about memory and teaching/learning (1) (2) (3). For the purposes of this post, we will refer to what might be called a “standard” or traditional model of memory. Some elements of this model are borrowed from cognitive load and depth of processing theory, but this simplified “three-box” memory model has been useful during teaching and learning discussions in our district, so we use it as an overall organizing model as we discuss connections between memory theory and feedback advice from assessment literature. 

Retrieval Practice 

A component of the memory model that may be useful to teachers as they think about feedback is retrieval practice. Agarwal and Bain (4) define retrieval as “...when we access information and bring it to mind” (p. 10) and retrieval practice as “... when we practice bringing information to mind. We tend to think that most learning occurs during the encoding stage, but a wealth of research demonstrates that learning is strengthened during retrieval” (p. 11). Even if students manage to encode information and skills into long term memory, they need to be able to access this information when needed. The ability to retrieve information and skills when needed is a product of storage strength (how deeply/strongly the information was encoded) and retrieval strength (how often we have retrieved this information in the past). Information may be firmly stored in long term memory but if we don’t practice retrieving that information, we may lose the “path” to it and be less able to use the information when needed to solve problems. Retrieval practice is key—the more practice we get retrieving the information, the stronger our retrieval strength is, increasing the chance we can use the information when needed. Timing is important. A “gap” between encoding and retrieval practice is optimal: “We recommend spacing retrieval practice at least a few days after the lesson. Why? Again, the more challenging the retrieval, the better; so the more spacing, the better.” (4, p. 102). This timing is particularly applicable to teacher decisions about feedback. In many instances it may be useful for teachers to provide “space” between students’ learning, student work, teacher feedback, and when students are instructed to think about and use feedback to revise their work. 

Providing Feedback to Elicit Retrieval Practice 

When Monitoring Learning, Ask Questions of All Students. Requiring all students to answer the questions teachers use to monitor and adjust instruction yields better information for these decisions (5) (6). Providing opportunities for all students to answer a question (e.g., with response cards, on whiteboards, through choral responses, through partner discussion, using technology quiz tools or online polls), rather than calling on a specific student (even randomly) promotes retrieval practice for all students (because each student needs to access and produce the information requested) and gives students better information about what they know and what they still need to study (4). It also gives teachers more complete information about whether students are ready for them to move on to the next concept or unit.

Time Feedback Based on Purpose. Research on the best timing for feedback indicates that immediate feedback allows students to quickly correct errors while delayed feedback can lead to better transfer of learning (7) (8). It is important to correct errors as soon as possible so that students do not encode them in memory. However, delaying feedback will build in some spacing between initial learning and retrieval practice, which will increase the challenge (and the benefit) for the student of retrieving the information as they use the feedback.

Example: Feedback That Encourages Retrieval Practice.

[Note: This fictionalized example is a compilation of classroom practices based on discussions with teachers and our own experiences.]

Fourth grade students in Ms. Diehl’s class worked on a lab activity in class as part of a unit on electrical circuits. The lab was focused on building a circuit in series with the goal that students would ultimately understand the differences between a series and a parallel circuit. Students completed the lab activity with a partner where they built the circuit in series from electrical components. Each student drew a picture of their circuit in their science notebooks and discussed with their partner some questions meant to help them understand how the circuit worked and learn necessary vocabulary. During the activity, Ms. Diehl walked around the room, listened in on discussions between partners, and asked probing questions to determine if students understood the vocabulary and concepts. Ms. Diehl verbally highlighted and corrected common misconceptions for the whole class. At the end of the activity, she drew a picture of a sample circuit to which students could compare their own drawings. Each student then wrote a brief explanation of how the circuit worked using a list of vocabulary words Ms. Diehl wrote on the board. Some students who needed language supports used sentence frames provided by Ms. Diehl. Ms. Diehl collected the science notebooks and wrote some questions in the margins of the notebooks to help students clarify their thinking. After the next lab, which focused on parallel circuits, students used time in class to review Ms. Diehl’s feedback on both lab descriptions and then wrote about the similarities and differences between series and parallel circuits. During class, all students had an opportunity to illustrate a circuit, discuss answers to questions with a partner, and write an explanation of what they had learned about circuits. Ms. Diehl provided immediate verbal feedback to correct misconceptions and a model for students to check their drawings. Ms. Diehl also gave students delayed feedback in their science notebooks, which students had an opportunity to use in their inferences about the similarities and differences between the two kinds of circuits. In this way, Ms. Diehl both helped students encode the correct information and elicited retrieval practice as students remembered concepts and vocabulary in their later thinking.

References

1. Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Chapter: Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In Spence, K. W., & Spence, J. T. The psychology of learning and motivation (Volume 2). New York: Academic Press. pp. 89–195.

2. Craik, F. I. M., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 671–684. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-5371(72)80001-x

3. Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on Learning. Cognitive Science. 12 (2): 257–285.

4. Agarwal, P. K., & Bain, P. M. (2019). Powerful teaching : unleash the science of learning. Jossey-Bass.

5. Wiliam, D., & Leahy, S. (2015). Embedding formative assessment: practical techniques for K-12 classrooms. Learning Sciences International.

6. Popham, W. J. (2011). Transformative assessment in action: an inside look at applying the process. ASCD.

7. Shute, V. J. (2008). Focus on Formative Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 78(1), 153–189. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654307313795

8. Brookhart, S. M. (2017). How to give effective feedback to your students. ASCD.