Benefits of deliberate practise

Practice is important for educational activity and learning in at to the lowest degree five ways:

  1. Practice greatly increases the likelihood that students will permanently call back new information (Anderson, 2008).

  2. Practice increases student facility or automaticity (learning to apply elements of noesis automatically, without reflection). Automaticity is usually only achieved through extensive rehearsal and repetition. Automaticity frees upwards students cognitive resource to handle more challenging tasks (Brownish & Bennett, 2002; Moors & De Houwer, 2006).

  3. When students practice solving bug, they increase their power to transfer practiced skills to new and more complex bug. This is true in childhood (Glover, Ronning, & Bruning, 1990) and developed years (Li, Schmiedek, Huxhold, Röcke, Smith, & Lindenberger, 2008).

  4. Practise helps students acquire expertise in subject matter and, therefore, information technology helps to distinguish novices from experts in given subjects (Ericsson, Krampe, & Clemens, 1993)

  5. Cognitive gains from practise often bring almost motivation for more learning (Kalchman, Moss, & Case, 2001).

Teachers should retrieve of practice non every bit rote repetition, but as deliberate, goal-directed rehearsal paired with reflection on problem-solving processes. For example, when teachers have students practice identifying phonemes, the ultimate goal is for students to read with fluency and comprehension. Although fluent reading may exist too complex a job for beginning readers to tackle, the more manageable chore of identifying phonemes may scaffold students learning to achieve the ultimate goal of reading. That is, teachers should e'er blueprint practice activities with the goal of transferring knowledge to new and more complex problems in mind.

General recommendations for practise and instruction

Research (Anderson, 2008; Campitelli & Gobet, 2011; Ericsson, Krampe, & Clemens, 1993) suggests several conditions that must be in place in order for do activities to exist most effective in moving students closer to adept operation. Each of these conditions can be met with carefully designed education:

  • Because exercise requires intense, focused effort, students may not find it inherently enjoyable. Therefore, teachers tin can encourage students to practice more than past pointing out every time that practise has really improved their performance. Motivate your students to practise by:
    • Expressing conviction in students' ability to succeed in solving practice problems.
    • Designing activities that maximize opportunities for students to succeed.
  • Teachers should design practice tasks with students existing knowledge in listen. When students succeed at do problems, the benefits of exercise are maximized. Only when students become frustrated with unrealistic or poorly designed practice problems, they often lose motivation, volition non receive the full benefits of the exercise they have done, and volition exist less motivated to attempt future practice problems.

  • Students receive the greatest benefits from practise when teachers provide them with timely and descriptive feedback.

  • Students should have repeated opportunities to practice a task through practicing other tasks like it.

What type of feedback is near effective?

Feedback is almost effective when it contains descriptions of how students piece of work meets operation criteria and what students can do to amend. This kind of descriptive feedback is more constructive than feedback consisting of vague, general comments (e.one thousand., "nice work or "needs improvement).

Feedback should as well be focused on the learning procedure. That is, teachers should focus their feedback on helping students reflect on their problem solving skills, as well every bit on progress they have made.

Do's and don'ts

Exercise's:
  1. Vary practice activities.

  2. Distribute exercise over extended periods of time.

  3. Provide clear instructions on performance expectations and criteria.

  4. Earlier asking students to practice independently, model the problem-solving process that you expect students to use.

  5. Break complex problems into their constituent elements, and take students exercise on these smaller elements before asking them to solve circuitous problems independently.

  6. Guide students through sample do problems by using prompts that assistance them reverberate on problem-solving strategies.

  7. Provide students with fully completed sample bug too as partially completed sample problems before asking them to use new problem-solving strategies on their ain.

  8. Wait until students actually need more information to solve a complex problem before you give them more than data. This strategy — known every bit "just-in-time pedagogy" — helps go on the amount of information that students must hold in their short-term memories to a manageable level every bit they exercise (Linneman & Plake, 2006; Simkins & Maier, 2008).

  9. Provide plenty of opportunities for students to do applying problem-solving skills before you lot exam them on their ability to use those skills.

Don'ts:
  1. Don't ask students to practice complex problem solving without providing them with plenty of guidance and feedback.

  2. Don't overload students past presenting information in redundant formats.

  3. Don't give your students complex practice problems before they have the skills they need to succeed.

Homo memory

Research suggests that when teachers construct problems for students to practice, they should keep in mind the limitations of human memory.

Moving information to permanent storage is often explained as a multistore model of retentiveness (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; 1971; Baddeley, 1996; 2002). Co-ordinate to this model, our brains have three retentivity storage systems: sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory (Baddeley, 1996; 2002; Carlson, Sullivan, & Schneider, 1989). Learning occurs when nosotros motion information from working memory to long-term memory, and practice helps with this process.

Deliberate practice (sometimes chosen 'rehearsal') keeps the information in our short-term memory long enough for it to move to long-term retentivity. Once it is in long-term memory, it tin exist congenital upon to create more and more circuitous associations (Baddeley, 2002).

Rehearsal

Near researchers concord that in that location are forms of Short-Term Memory (STM) for different modalities, such as visual STM, auditory STM and motor STM. For example, Baddeley (1992; 1996; 2002) suggests that brusk-term retentivity is a dynamic identify where sounds and images are turned into verbal and pictorial models. STM is also thought to have a "central executive" that manages the information information technology is belongings. This central executive as well controls our awareness of that information (Baddeley, 2002).

The implication for teachers is that they should present material in multiple modalities. If a child who is learning to read hears a word, sees the word and a picture of the give-and-take, there will exist more learning. The child can get the visual information from the visual STM and additional auditory information in the auditory STM. These two sensory sources of information supplement and complement ane another (Liao, 2014). Yet, teachers must be conscientious not to accept besides much extraneous information in the classroom. Over stimulation can put as well much demand on working retentiveness (Pass & Kester, 2006).

Short-term or working retentivity

Working retention or short-term memory, is stored for very short periods of fourth dimension — minutes at nigh. Information in our short-term memory is generally housed in the temporal lobe of the encephalon (the hippocampal region). It allows you to think telephone numbers and as well data that comes from long-term memory right before you need to use it. Curt-term memory is also the memory system that is used when we cram for a test at the concluding minute. Attention difficulties, distractions and overload of too much data all negatively impact our short-term memory and cause it to fail. We all have a express ability to focus on too much stimuli at the aforementioned time, and if nosotros don't process the information, we lose information technology. Exercise helps us increase our ability to access information rapidly and automatically.

Practice too frees our brains to process more challenging information and bug. For example, if a kid has memorized the multiplication table and can retrieve it automatically, working memory is freed to exercise more complicated computations.

Practice can improve children's working retentiveness and heighten learning of academic skills, such as reading comprehension and mathematical reasoning (east.g., Dahlin, 2011; Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Holmes, Gathercole, & Dunning, 2009), verbal learning (Liao, Kronemer, Yau, Desmond, & Marvel, 2014) and motor skills (Gomes, Ugrinowitsch, Marinho, Shea, Raisbeck, & Benda, R., 2014).

And practice using visual spatial tasks can ameliorate visual-spatial working retentiveness (Melby-Lervag & Hulme, 2012; Shipstead, Redick, & Engle, 2012). Besides, children can be taught a rehearsal or do strategy to help them better their reading comprehension (e.k., Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Bakery, 2001; Rose, Cundick, & Higbee, 1983). Moreover, rehearsal is easier to learn and less demanding than other strategies (Turley-Ames & Whitfield, 2003).

Long-term retention

When working-retentivity is stored, it becomes long-term memory. Long-term memory is the depository of memories throughout the encephalon that results from the ongoing chemical processes that changes neuronal connections. The germination of long-term memories takes place over the span of days, weeks and in some cases years. Equally the memories are consolidated, neuron connections become more and more efficient, and in the process, connections that are no longer useful are discarded from lack of use.

Although the capacity of our long-term retentivity is manifestly limitless (as far as we know, no one has ever stored all that the brain is capable of storing), working memory can typically agree but seven items (plus or minus 2) at any given fourth dimension, and these items "disuse" rapidly (Miller, 1956; Baddeley, 2002).

Changes in the brain

Research on the brains of rats has shown that relatively brusk periods of practice can enhance the plasticity of the brain and actually change its structure (Rioult-Pedotti, Friedman, Hess, & Donoghue, 1998). Brain imaging has shown that even a brief lesson on new words changes encephalon circuits (Allami, Brovelli, Hamzaoui, Regragui, Paulignan, & Boussaoud, 2014; Abdullaev & Posner, 1998; Raichle et al., 1994) and retrieval (Habib, Nyberg, & Tulving, 2003).

Experts and novices differ in the amount and structure of data stored in their long-term memories. These cerebral differences occur in large office considering of differences in the amount of deliberate practice in which each has engaged (Cantor & Engle, 1993).

All-encompassing and deliberate practice makes it possible for students to access and apply increasingly complex data without explicitly thinking nigh information technology. In other words, it increases automaticity (see before discussion of automaticity) (Anderson, 2008; Case, 1985, 1991). Automaticity leaves students' working memories gratis to process new information (Kotovsky, Hayes, & Simon, 1985). Since working retentivity tin exist overloaded at any time, 'savings' from automaticity become very important. When at that place is as well much information in our working retention it will fail, and the chemical processes that transfer information to our long-term memories also fail. Long-term learning is enhanced by a distribution process in which information is repeated, allowing time with time in betwixt practice sessions, rather than crammed practice.

Reviews and tests are forms of practice that tin improve learning. Tests (or quizzes) that are given immediately after a learning exercise requite children opportunities to practice. Considering learning is recent, students tend to do well on these tests. All the same, their success does not ensure long-term retention. Teachers can provide time during class to give students additional practice in taking tests. Some tests, such as tests with open up-ended answers have been shown to raise learning because they involve students in the "retrieval" of information from long-term memory. Tests are more effective when they are given at spaced intervals and when they are given often (Choose, 2000; Dempster; 1991; Rodriguez, Michael, 2004;Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).

Chunking information, or combining small bits together in short-term retention, is another strategy that students can use to increment their STM belongings capacity. Although chunking gives a student more chapters in their STM, its usefulness depends on how much knowledge a person already has. The more knowledge one has on a topic, the more likely that 1 can "chunk" incoming information into larger and more than meaningful chunks. This is why knowledge itself adds to one's ability to solve complex bug. Children who apply chunking are more probable to be strategic about their learning. Teachers tin help children get more strategic past explicitly teaching them strategies like chunking.

Example of chunking information

The post-obit digits tin exist seen as a random list of numbers: 14921776. Random or meaningless information taxes the limited capacity of curt-term memory (STM). However, if a pupil "chunks" the information into two dates (1492: Columbus discovered America; and 1776: the twelvemonth the Declaration of Independence was signed) it is learned as 1492 1776. This leaves room in the short-term memory for more information.

Chunking allows several units of information to be compressed into a single meaningful unit or chunk (east.k., whereas a random number string in a higher place represents 8 discrete units to be stored in short-term memory (almost its maximum capacity), the two meaningful dates represent just two chunks of information to exist stored. This leaves space in the STM for more than information to exist held. And when more than information is held in STM, in that location is more information bachelor for transfer to long-term retention where information technology can be permanently stored (Gobet et al., 2001).

Chunking can develop experts' schema. Information stored in the encephalon in larger chunks of integrated concepts are known as "schemas." For case, a novice chess player who does not yet have complex schemas for chess playing has to devote his or her limited working retentivity to processing large amounts of data while playing (Anderson, 1996).

An expert, on the other hand, can hands access schemas from long-term memory (deGroot, 1966; Cantor & Engle, 1993). With practice, a novice histrion can construct chess-playing schemas and therefore increment the corporeality of data stored in long-term retention. In this way, do accessing and applying knowledge helps one to transfer that knowledge into a "permastore" of long-term retentiveness so that he or she can more than efficiently utilise infinite available in the working retentivity (Elo, 1978; Kotovsky & Fallside, 1989).

Theories explaining expert operation

  1. Many researchers (east.g., Ericsson et al., 1993; Baddeley, 2002) contend that differences in the corporeality of practice account for the majority of performance differences between individuals, resulting from differences in the corporeality and structure of noesis stored in long-term memory.
  2. Other researchers emphasize innate, genetic differences or talent as the main factor accounting for differences between expert and novice operation (Mosing, et.al., 2014; Plomin, DeFries, McClearn, & Rutter, 1997).
  3. More recently, researchers accept emphasized an interaction between innate and behavioral factors in accounting for differences in performance levels (Gobet & Campitelli, 2007).

Overall, the research supports the view that deliberate practice plays a role in performance differences and can reduce operation differences between individuals who are idea to possess talent and those who do not (Chase & Ericsson, 1981). See Gobet and Campitelli (2007), Mosing, et.al., (2014) and Macnamara, et.al., (2014) for a comprehensive review of this debate.

FAQs

What can a teacher exercise to maximize the positive effect of practise?

When teachers assign students to complete practice problems that are structurally similar but different in surface features, information technology helps them discriminate betwixt relevant and irrelevant information in a given problem. This outcome makes it more likely that students will be able to transfer noesis gained from practice to new and more circuitous problems (Paas, 1992). As with all scaffolds, they should exist diminished gradually as learners become increasingly more than independent.

Practice

Students' problem-solving skills likewise increase when teachers distribute practice over time rather than "cramming" practise into curt periods (Bahrick & Hall, 2005). Assignments involving practice are more than effective when they are shorter, more than frequent and distributed over longer periods of time (Cooper, 2007; Cooper, Robinson, & Patall, 2006; Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2010). This distributive event is especially important considering it besides makes it more likely that students will recall information over longer periods of time. Therefore, distributed do helps students transfer information into their long-term memory.

Teachers should besides take students begin homework during grade. By doing so, teachers tin monitor students to ensure they empathise and can solve practice bug correctly before they practice independently. If teachers are unable to monitor this initial practice, they should explain to their students where they can obtain the information (textbooks, spider web sites, handouts, etc.) they need to complete the assigned practise problems correctly.

Reviews and tests are a form of practice that tin improve learning. Tests provide opportunities for practice that heighten learning. Open up-ended examination questions also provide do in retrieving data. Both reviews and tests are near effective when they are well spaced and frequent (Dempster, 1991).

Teachers can train students to reflect on their thinking when solving problems by providing them with lists of questions. This kind of "strategy instruction" helps students to construct schemas more efficiently by facilitating a metacognitive awareness of the problem-solving process. That is, students learn more almost how they learn and this helps them with new learning.

Teachers tin can increase students' abilities to transfer existing trouble-solving knowledge to new problems when they prompt students to deliberately reflect on trouble-solving strategies they have used before. (Renkl, Stark, Gruber, & Mandl, 1998; Rosenshine & Meister, 1992; Stark, Mandl, Gruber, & Renkl., 2002).

Is homework always effective practice?

At that place is no question that homework can provide students with opportunities for exercise but at that place are more and less effective homework assignments. Research on homework (Cooper, 2001, 2006; Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2010) suggests that the relationship betwixt time spent on homework and students' academic achievement varies with class level. When parental interest is well structured it can besides enhance the effectiveness of homework on learning (Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2010; Marzano & Pickering, 2007).

How much fourth dimension should be spent on homework?

Although high school students announced to benefit from at least two hours of homework per nighttime, there is little or no relationship between time spent on homework and academic accomplishment for young (grades one-three) students (Marzano, & Pickering, 2007). Younger students may do good more than from supervised in-school practice than from homework. Heart schoolhouse students may do good from i to ii hours of homework per night (Cooper, 2007).

Will practice activities negatively touch students' motivation? Aren't practice activities the same equally "drill and kill" pedagogy?

Although deliberate practice is often confused with rote learning, researchers emphasize that at that place is a difference between mere repetition and deliberate do. For practice to exist effective, appropriate instruction, guided practice, as well as descriptive and timely feedback must all be present.

Does practice with "accurate" issues increment learning?

Due to their relevance, "authentic" issues or "existent-life" bug may motivate students. Even so, the positive consequence of practice is only realized when teachers provide instructional supports that address the limitations of students' working memories (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996, 2000; Sweller, van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998; van Merrienboer, Kirschner, & Kester, 2003). If at that place is cognitive overload and the working memory is taxed beyond its capacity, students will lose motivation even if a problem is highly relevant to them.

Although "authentic" practise problems audio like they would motivate students with their real-world context; they may also include also many variables at the same time. Students' working memories are thus required to manage besides many bits of information, and many of these $.25 may not be directly involved with the construction of the desired schema (Sweller & Chandler, 1994).

Is there such a thing as besides much practice?

Merely repeating a chore will not automatically ameliorate performance. Deliberate do is most constructive when it involves intense concentration, rehearsal and reflection. For that reason, students are more probable to benefit from frequent, curt do sessions than from long "cramming" sessions. Teachers can foster this meta-cognitive learning process by providing students with frequent opportunities to hash out their problem-solving strategies (National Inquiry Council, 2005).

Even in early grades when students are acquiring foundational knowledge, practice should not exist confused with rote learning. For example, phonics instruction is most effective when it is practiced aslope more than complex skills similar identifying main ideas in stories (National Institute of Kid Wellness and Human being Development, 2000).

Does practise piece of work for all academic subjects?

Practice is correlated with pupil achievement across all developmental levels and across all subjects. NICHD's (2000) assay of strategies for reading education suggests that several kinds of exercise activities are beneficial to students. Phonemic awareness practice, phonics practice and read-aloud exercise all showed meaning positive effects on pupil achievement in the early grades. Teachers should always continue long-term goals in mind when they are designing exercise activities. The ultimate purpose of phonics teaching is non for students to identify phonemes, only rather, to better their reading comprehension. The goal of practice is to transfer caused skills to new and more complex issues. Therefore, do activities should always be designed with that transfer process in listen.

Studies in mathematics education show that exercise is constructive when teachers design appropriate exercise problems, distribute them over time, and provide students with sufficient feedback. Practice is ineffective when information technology is not accordingly designed, non well distributed, and when adequate feedback is not provided.

Deliberate practice is likewise constructive in learning circuitous skills from musical fluency to athletic expertise.

When does the strategy work?

All students benefit from well-designed, developmentally-advisable deliberate practice activities. A meta-analysis (Macnamara, Hambrick, & Oswald, 2014) showed that the effects of deliberate do are robust for games, music and sports, and modestly effective in education.

Deliberate practise tin can also provide a bridge over the gaps that exist between different accomplishment levels. Achievement gaps often exist considering of unequal opportunities for students to engage in appropriate deliberate exercise rather than unequal learning abilities. Every bit children grow older, they become better able to do good from instruction on appropriate strategies similar rehearsal, reflection and "chunking" information.

Special populations benefit from practice activities that are designed to meet their needs (Chapman, & Mudar, 2014; Nunes, Barros, Evans, & Burman, 2014; Rose, Cundick, & Higbee, 1983). For example, research on children with language processing problems suggests that their difficulties are due to sensory perception rather than an disability to larn. One reason that language-learning impaired students have difficulty learning to read is that their phonemic recognition and spatial discrimination perceptions are impaired. Appropriate practice activities have been shown to help these students recoup for their difficulties (Merzenich et al., 1996). Cooper's (2001) examination of homework practise suggests that students with learning disabilities benefit nearly from curt, skill-reinforcing activities that are carefully monitored (see also Marzano & Pickering, 2007).

Description of enquiry on the apply of do activities with children with learning disabilities

An all-encompassing meta-assay of interventions for students with learning disabilities establish that practice-drill-review instructional strategies were generally effective across academic subjects (Swanson, Hoskyn, & Lee, 1999). Another meta-analysis of inclusion settings found that time-on-task correlated with student accomplishment across subject areas (Brophy & Good, 1986). Therefore, do activities appear to exist a key factor in student achievement beyond grade levels, skill levels and academic domains.

In summary, well-designed practice activities outcome from conscientious planning where teachers:

  • Model problem-solving processes.
  • Design partially-completed examples on which students can practice.
  • Sequence activities logically.
  • Infinite exercise activities accordingly.
  • Monitor student practice providing guidance and feedback.
Is practice effective across the age span?

Children abound more strategic equally they get older. Younger children are less strategic — are less likely to rehearse, practice, or chunk spontaneously or to know how to do these things well. They are also less likely to monitor their own cognition or to use metacognitive strategies. Younger children are less probable than older children to know what they need to rehearse or exercise more. Therefore, teachers of younger children should introduce them to strategies such as rehearsal and practice, and in this way tin can help students improve their learning.

Deliberate practice is constructive across all schoolhouse age levels. Central practice skills are more appropriate for earlier grades than it is for later grades. Teachers can focus younger students on the skills they volition demand later when they tackle more complex tasks. For example, phonemic sensation instruction is more than effective for preschool students than for older elementary schoolhouse students (NICHD, 2000), but it remains a skill that is very useful in later grades.

Teachers should design developmentally appropriate practise bug for students. Students' memories and attending spans develop with age (Gomez-Perez & Ostrosky-Solis, 2006; Lechuga, Moreno, Pelegrina, Gomez-Ariza, & Bajo, 2006). In full general, older students have greater attending spans and greater memory chapters than younger students. This may account for developmental differences seen in the benefits of homework (Cooper, 2001; Muhlenbrook, Cooper, Nye, & Lindsay, 1999) and historic period differences in the amount of do that learners appoint in outside the classroom (Ericsson et al., 1993). Teachers should program the type and amount of practice students are expected to do with these developmental differences in heed.

Research on adept performance shows that experts increase the amount of deliberate practise they engage in over time. For instance, enquiry by Ericsson and colleagues (1993) on expert violinists revealed that in early childhood they skilful no more five hours per week. Notwithstanding, by their early on twenties, they adept around thirty hours per week. Because deliberate do is so taxing, it should be balanced with sufficient periods of rest. Younger learners tire more than speedily and lose their motivation to persist if they are not allowed sufficient rest (Ericsson et al., 1993; NICHD, 2000).

Developmental Timeline

Elementary

  • Early elementary students benefit niggling or not at all from homework (Campitelli & Gobet, 2011; Cooper, 2001; Halford, Maybery, & Bain, 1986).
  • Practiced violinists good fewer than 5 hours per week at the early babyhood phase (Ericsson et al., 1993; Macnamara et al., 2014).
  • Enquiry supports the thought that do can aid unproblematic students overcome processing deficits (Merzenich et al., 1996).
  • Practise with phonemic awareness has been shown to have a positive effect on reading outcomes in elementary readers through sixth grade. Effects were not as stiff for disabled readers every bit they were for at-risk and unremarkably progressing readers. The effects of phonemic-sensation education were strongest when information technology was provided in earlier grades (especially pre-Grand and kindergarten), in small-scale group settings, in shorter grooming programs and to English language-speaking students (NICHD, 2000).
  • Research suggests that systematic phonics educational activity helps students learning to read. The effects of systematic phonics didactics were greater when it was provided in earlier grades (especially kindergarten and 1st course) (Dahlin, 2011; Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; NICHD, 2000).
  • A meta-analysis of intervention strategies for students with learning disabilities institute that phonics instruction positively affects development of vocabulary, although the results on comprehension were unclear (Swanson et al., 1999). (The mean age for the study participants was eleven; 78% of the studies targeted 9-xiv yr historic period range.).
  • Research suggests that repeated and guided-repeated oral reading strategies have a positive effect on reading performance through grade four, especially for non-impaired readers (Dahlin, 2011; Gersten, et al., 2001; Rose et al., 1983).
  • Swanson et al.'s (1999) meta-assay suggests that "the instruction of whole language without due attention to decoding places LD children at greater hazard than the use of more traditional programs" (p. 254).
  • Vocabulary education (both explicit and implicit) has a positive upshot on vocabulary acquisition. Research indicates that students should exist exposed to vocabulary repeatedly and in multiple contexts (NICHD, 2000).
  • Research suggests that reading comprehension strategy educational activity (e.g., cognitive and meta-cerebral strategies) has a positive effect on reading comprehension and memory in grades iii-6. The effects were greater when strategy instruction was more intensive and when students were instructed in multiple strategies (NICHD, 2000).
  • Research suggests that "drill-repetition-exercise" instructional strategies are beneficial to students with learning disabilities across all age groups and across all subjects (Swanson et al., 1999).

Middle Schoolhouse

  • Centre school students may do good from one to two hours of homework per night (Cooper, 2001; Campitelli & Gobet, 2011).
  • Inquiry suggests that partial-task practice problems are more constructive than whole-task practice problems for some 13 year-old math students. Partial-chore practice lowered the processing demands on working memory for all students, but it only increased learning for students with depression prior knowledge. Students with loftier prior noesis benefited more than from whole-chore practice (Ayres, 2006).
  • Research suggests that when modeling problem-solving strategies, the utilise of worked examples is beneficial for middle school students' writing performance. As with Ayres' (2006) report, however, the positive furnishings were limited to low-performing students. The results suggested that "low-level" writers benefited from worked-case practice issues, while "loftier-level" writers benefited from "goal-complimentary" practice problems.
  • Research suggests that the use of repeated and guided-repeated oral reading strategies positively affect students' reading functioning. This is especially truthful for students with reading problems (NICHD, 2000).
  • Programs aimed at encouraging students to read more (e.g., self-selected, silent reading) yielded no significant positive furnishings on reading achievement (NICHD, 2000).
  • Swanson et al.'s (1999) meta-analysis suggests that "the teaching of whole language without due attention to decoding places LD children at greater risk than the use of more traditional programs" (p. 254).
  • Results that back up the positive furnishings of vocabulary educational activity (both explicit and implicit) on vocabulary acquisition indicate that students should be exposed to vocabulary repeatedly and in multiple contexts (NICHD, 2000).
  • Research suggests that reading-comprehension-strategy teaching (e.g., cerebral and meta-cerebral strategies) has a positive effect on reading comprehension and retentiveness in grades 3-6. The effects were greater when strategy pedagogy was more intensive and when students were instructed on multiple strategies (NICHD, 2000).
  • Research suggests that "drill-repetition-do" instructional strategies are beneficial to students with learning disabilities across all age groups and across all subjects (Swanson et al., 1999).

Loftier School

  • High school students appear to benefit from at least two hours of homework per night, (Campitelli & Gobet, 2011; Cooper, 2001).
  • Students may do good from more than practice with the transfer of component skills than from practicing whole-task transfer (Pollock, Chandler, & Sweller, 2002). Examples worked out in advance for students were more effective for algebra problem solving transfer than were conventional issues for 9th and 11th class students (Sweller & Cooper, 1985).
  • Repeated and guided-repeated oral reading strategies positively affect reading performance. This is peculiarly true for loftier school students with reading problems (NICHD, 2000).
  • Programs aimed at encouraging students to read more (e.g., self-selected, silent reading) yielded no significant positive effects on reading achievement (NICHD, 2000).
  • Although enquiry supports a positive effect of vocabulary instruction (both explicit and implicit) on vocabulary acquisition in grades 9-eleven, few studies have been conducted at that level. Results that do exist advise that students should be exposed to vocabulary repeatedly and in multiple contexts (NICHD, 2000).
  • Research suggests that "drill-repetition-practice" instructional strategies are beneficial to students with learning disabilities beyond all age groups and across all subjects (Swanson et al., 1999).

Where can teachers get more information?

Anderson, J. R. (1996). Act: A unproblematic theory of complex knowledge. American Psychologist, 51(four), 355-368. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.51.4.355

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people larn: Brain, heed, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. ISBN 0-309-07036-8

Carver, S. M. & Klahr, D. (Eds.). (2001). Cognition and instruction: Xx-v years of progress. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.