Inexpensive techniques to improve education: Applying cognitive psychology to enhance educational practice

The need to improve the educational system has never been greater. People in congress and business argue for expensive technological applications to improve education despite a lack of empirical evidence for their efficacy. We argue that one inexpensive avenue for improving education has been largely ignored. Cognitive and educational psychologists have identified strategies that greatly improve learning and retention of information, and yet these techniques are not generally applied in education nor taught in education schools. In fact, teachers often use instructional practices known to be wrong (i.e., massing rather than interleaving examples to explain a topic). We identify three general principles that are inexpensive to implement and have been shown in both laboratory and field experiments to improve learning: (1) distribution (spacing and interleaving) of practice in learning facts and skills; (2) retrieval practice (via self testing) for durable learning; and (3) explanatory questioning (elaborative interrogation and self-explanation) as a study strategy. We describe each technique, provide supporting evidence, and discuss classroom applications. Each principle can be applied to most subject matters from kindergarten to higher education. Applying findings from cognitive psychology to classroom instruction is no panacea for educational problems, but it represents one helpful and inexpensive strategy.