I'm not sure that anyone takes Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve as the gospel truth explanation of forgetting - it's more to illustrate the fact that this topic has been studied and we can learn from it for teaching. And his work is also misunderstood for all sorts of agendas.
In a contemporary classroom context, what are the types of information or topics where the work on retrieval is misapplied for disconnected rote learning? In other words, what have you observed to be the fertile ground for lethal mutations?
An enlightening piece, thanks. It resonates with the work I've been doing on the topic of spelling instruction stemming from my PhD: the notion of building multi-faceted representations of words through cumulative learning of words via an instructional routine that supports retrieval in connected & meaningful ways: Focus 1 (Ph) + Focus 2 (Or) + Focus 3 (M) + Focus 4 (cross-mapping PhOrM).
Very interesting Carl, thank you, but it isn't really a framework which I can follow.
Are you arguing that the approximate doubling of gaps between retrievals is a decent approximation (on average), provided that later retrievals also ask students to connect what they remember to something else they know, or should remember? (And at what stage to retrievals have to switch from simple memory of facts - the first, the second, the fifth?)
Or are you also arguing that the gaps are so inaccurate as to be useless? Do you have other spacings in mind?
The answer that it is different for each individual is no help in designing any kind of retrieval spacing. Let's imagine I learn about the Greek myths in September of year 7. What would the following 7 retrievals look like in order for them to take account of the effects you mention? And when would they happen?
Yeah great question and this where the rubber really meets the road in terms of applying the science of learning. I’m not arguing that spaced retrieval, including an approximate doubling of gaps, is entirely inaccurate or useless, it’s more a reasonable starting point. However, my main point is that it needs to be paired with meaningful retrieval that forces students to connect new knowledge with prior learning rather than treating memory as a passive storage system.
I'm definitely not saying it's different for each individual to the point of being unworkable. We are more similar than different in how we learn. The key point is that retrieval needs to evolve over time and be connected to a wider body of knowledge, rather than being a fixed sequence of identical recall tasks. A simple doubling of retrieval gaps may be a decent approximation for preventing forgetting, but if those retrievals don’t engage deeper thinking and activate schemas, they risk becoming surface-level rehearsals rather than meaningful learning opportunities.
I'm not sure that anyone takes Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve as the gospel truth explanation of forgetting - it's more to illustrate the fact that this topic has been studied and we can learn from it for teaching. And his work is also misunderstood for all sorts of agendas.
In a contemporary classroom context, what are the types of information or topics where the work on retrieval is misapplied for disconnected rote learning? In other words, what have you observed to be the fertile ground for lethal mutations?
An enlightening piece, thanks. It resonates with the work I've been doing on the topic of spelling instruction stemming from my PhD: the notion of building multi-faceted representations of words through cumulative learning of words via an instructional routine that supports retrieval in connected & meaningful ways: Focus 1 (Ph) + Focus 2 (Or) + Focus 3 (M) + Focus 4 (cross-mapping PhOrM).
Great post!
Very interesting Carl, thank you, but it isn't really a framework which I can follow.
Are you arguing that the approximate doubling of gaps between retrievals is a decent approximation (on average), provided that later retrievals also ask students to connect what they remember to something else they know, or should remember? (And at what stage to retrievals have to switch from simple memory of facts - the first, the second, the fifth?)
Or are you also arguing that the gaps are so inaccurate as to be useless? Do you have other spacings in mind?
The answer that it is different for each individual is no help in designing any kind of retrieval spacing. Let's imagine I learn about the Greek myths in September of year 7. What would the following 7 retrievals look like in order for them to take account of the effects you mention? And when would they happen?
Yeah great question and this where the rubber really meets the road in terms of applying the science of learning. I’m not arguing that spaced retrieval, including an approximate doubling of gaps, is entirely inaccurate or useless, it’s more a reasonable starting point. However, my main point is that it needs to be paired with meaningful retrieval that forces students to connect new knowledge with prior learning rather than treating memory as a passive storage system.
I'm definitely not saying it's different for each individual to the point of being unworkable. We are more similar than different in how we learn. The key point is that retrieval needs to evolve over time and be connected to a wider body of knowledge, rather than being a fixed sequence of identical recall tasks. A simple doubling of retrieval gaps may be a decent approximation for preventing forgetting, but if those retrievals don’t engage deeper thinking and activate schemas, they risk becoming surface-level rehearsals rather than meaningful learning opportunities.