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- Vol 5 RE: Chapter 8
retrieval practicesystematic reviewclassroom researcheffect sizesfeedback timingresearch generalizabilityJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
This systematic review asks whether retrieval practice works under normal school and classroom conditions. The authors screened nearly 2,000 abstracts and applied narrow inclusion criteria to 50 experiments involving 5,374 learners.
Key ideas
Of 49 reported effect sizes, 57 percent showed medium or large benefits. Positive effects appeared across educational levels, subject areas, test delays, retrieval formats, final-test formats, and different timings of practice and feedback. The review avoids collapsing highly varied classroom designs into one pooled estimate and instead reports individual effects and confidence intervals. A key limitation is geographic representation: only six percent of experiments came from non-WEIRD countries.
Why it matters
For educators, the findings support low-stakes retrieval as a broadly useful strategy while underscoring the need to adapt implementation to context and expand research with more diverse learners.
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Edition abbreviations
- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
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References are checked against publisher records, scholarly indexes, DOI or ISBN metadata, repositories and author records where available. An entry marked [Citation not verified] preserves the wording found in the relevant volume without attributing findings to an unconfirmed work.
From sources to a coherent pathway