Middle Years 

Difficulties and Learning

Recently I’ve been going back over some of the research on learning and memory by Professor Robert Bjork and Professor Elizabeth Bjork. They have developed a term they call “Desirable Difficulties,” which are learning tasks that require a considerable (but desirable) amount of effort, thereby improving long-term performance. This does not mean we should make everything we want to learn more difficult, it’s about students having a degree of background knowledge with which they can overcome any desirable difficulties embedded into their learning progress. Desirable difficulties aim to trigger encoding (remembering) and retrieval (using the info) processes to support learning, and include things such as varying the conditions of learning, interleaving instruction, spaced practice and testing. Middle Years students can easily incorporate these techniques into their study habits to help increase what they remember and understanding. They can do this via:

Varying study techniques:

Completing different review questions, in different ways (eg. verbally, written or using diagram). Taking notes in different ways, even studying in a different place from time to time can help vary practice.

Spacing Practice

Spacing practice supports long term retention due to the difficulty created by recalling information from the long-term memory. Recalling information covered some time ago, while not as enjoyable as quickly retrieving recently taught information, is also linked to reducing our rate of forgetting. Simply put – revisiting past topics helps us remember things longer. 

Mixing subjects or topics (interleaving)

Spend homework time on one subject, then take a break by studying another subject, before returning to the original subject again. This enforces interleaving by mixing several subjects while also spacing out studying over different intervals. 

Use Tests (self-testing)

Using testing as a training tactic. Performance can be improved by devoting time to testing by trying to recall the to-be-learned information. Using flashcards, self-tests etc. as a way to learn and recall information 

Learning is a difficult process, but by looking at difficulty as being beneficial to the learning process and following the desirable difficulties (listed above) students can use their homework and study time to efficiently in their learning process.

Reminders:

Thursday 28th July – 2023 Year 8 and 9 (current Year 7 and 8 students) Explore subject information accessible online (students will have an online link for this).

Friday 29th July – 2023 Year 8 and 9 Explore Expo at lunchtime in the da Vinci room.

Monday 1st August – Parent Cyber safety presentation by Susan McLean 7.00pm in the Simons Auditorium.

Ben Hawthorne

Head of Middle Years