- Title: Initial Practice Performance Moderates the Distributed Practice Effect in Complex Procedural Knowledge
- Authors: Ruitenburg et al
- Access the original paper here
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Paper summary
Ruitenburg et al.’s research investigates the impact of distributed practice on primary school students’ mathematical problem-solving abilities. The study explores whether spacing out practice sessions, as opposed to massing them together, improves long-term retention of complex procedural knowledge. The authors further examine if the effectiveness of distributed practice varies depending on a student’s initial performance level. The findings suggest that distributed practice is most beneficial for students with a medium level of initial proficiency. This work seeks to provide insights for educators and textbook authors on optimizing mathematics learning through practice strategies. The experiments comparing massed versus distributed practice for fostering problem-solving performance are summarized, providing context for the present study.
What are the key implications for teachers in the classroom?
For teachers in the classroom, the key implications relate to adopting distributed practice strategies for complex materials while considering students’ initial performance levels.
The study suggests an inverted U-shaped relationship between initial practice performance and the size of the spacing effect. Distributed practice is most beneficial when initial practice performance falls within approximately 35%-75%
If initial practice performance is low (less than 35%), re-exposure to the content through corrective feedback or restudy is needed. Shorter, expanding interstudy intervals should be used to make students’ retrieval and application successful.
If initial practice performance is high (more than 75%), longer, expanding interstudy intervals should be used to make students’ retrieval and application not only successful but also effortful. This is because students who have already mastered the task may find spaced retrieval and application too easy, reducing the “desirable difficulty” that makes distributed practice effective. By increasing the interval between practice sessions, the retrieval becomes more challenging, thus enhancing long-term retention
If initial practice performance is medium (35%–75%), distributed practice can be adopted confidently, and is expected to result in reliable increases in delayed problem-solving performance.
Encourage mathematics textbook authors, teachers, and students to adopt distributed practice, taking initial practice performance into account.
Quote
Distributed practice leads to better long- term problem-solving performance than massed practice, but only for students with medium initial practice performance who have not yet completely mastered the task
