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2 references
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- Vol 2 RE: Chapter 3
spacing effectretrieval practicelong-term retentiondesirable difficultieslow-stakes recallretrieval feedbackstudy self-regulationdistributed practiceJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Carpenter, Pan, and Butler review two well-supported learning strategies: spacing study over time and retrieving information from memory.
Key ideas
Both strengthen long-term learning across ages, content areas, and educational settings, yet learners often underuse them because massed study and rereading feel fluent and produce faster short-term gains. The authors examine mechanisms, boundary conditions, combinations with feedback and elaboration, and evidence from laboratories and classrooms. Spacing requires deciding how learning episodes are distributed; retrieval practice requires attempting recall rather than merely re-exposing oneself to material. Desirable difficulty can make effective study feel less successful while it is occurring, complicating self-regulation.
Why it matters
For educators, the review supports revisiting important ideas after delays, embedding frequent low-stakes recall, varying questions and contexts, correcting errors, and explaining why effortful practice is useful so students can make better independent study decisions.
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- Vol 1 RE: Chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, App A, App B
- Vol 1 TE: App A
- Vol 2 RE: Chapter 10, App C, App D
- Vol 4 RE: App A, App C
- Vol 4 TE: App C
- Vol 5 RE: Chapters 7, App A
distributed practicespacing effectverbal recallretention intervalinterstudy intervallong-term retentionspacing optimisationexpanding schedulesJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Cepeda and colleagues meta-analyse distributed practice in verbal recall, drawing 839 assessments from 317 experiments in 184 articles.
Key ideas
Spacing study episodes generally improves later retention compared with massing them together, but the best interval between study sessions is not fixed. Interstudy interval and final retention interval interact: as the time until the final test grows, the spacing that maximises performance also tends to grow. The review distinguishes the benefit of any spacing from the question of whether more spacing is always better and finds limited support for simple expanding schedules as a universal rule. Considerable variation and gaps in long-duration research remain.
Why it matters
For educators, the synthesis supports revisiting important material across separated occasions, choosing spacing in relation to how long knowledge should last, and avoiding both immediate repetition and excessively long gaps that make successful retrieval unlikely.
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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.
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