Boosting learning by making it desirably difficult

Elizabeth L. Bjork & Robert Bjork

Research Summary

Setting challenges, tasks or tests boosts learning more effectively than asking learners to re-study or re-read. There is a difference between learning and performance: learning is more independent and longer-term; cues present now may not be present later. This is a presentation of evidence from cognitive psychology, which shows that setting up ‘desirable difficulties’ (e.g. temporarily removing cues such as notes, or varying the context or place of learning, or interweaving learning on one topic with learning on another) can overcome a misleading sense of familiarity and promote mastery.

Researchers

Elizabeth L. Bjork & Robert Bjork

Research Institution

University of California, Los Angeles

What is this about?

What kinds of teaching and studying practices promote longer-term mastery of content or skills?

What was done?

The researchers surveyed and summarised various evidence pieces from cognitive psychology, including work of their own, to draw out advice on effective learning for both teachers and learners.

Main findings and outputs

• Learning is a more or less permanent change in knowledge or understanding. It’s hard to assess; current performance can be a highly unreliable measure of whether learning has occurred.
• How integrated is learning into the learner’s mind, into related knowledge and skills (‘storage strength’)? How easily can it be brought back to mind, currently (‘retrieval strength’)? Learners shouldn’t confuse these, as they may condition themselves to prefer poorer conditions of learning. The better ones can seem more difficult, moreover. They include:
  Varying the conditions (rooms, places, situations, kinds of task).
  ‘Spacing’ or ‘distributed learning’ (returning to a topic at periodic intervals rather than just cramming for apparently rapid gains).
  Interleaving topics with other topics to develop contrast, comparison and higher-order thinking.
  Using tests for learning not just assessment – they promote recall better than re-reading and promote meta-cognition (awareness of what learners know and need to re-address).
• Generally, learners need to act, interpret and prioritise output over input; they need to manage their own learning.

Relevance to RE

The general principles can be applied to any content including RE. Teachers might try varying learning locations (classroom, faith community centre, large space / small space, outdoor area . . . ) and kinds of task (individual, group, creative, analytic, etc.); revisiting studies on one religion or world-view part way through those of another; introducing comparative, simultaneous or parallel work on studies of more than one religion or world-view; or using unassessed tests.

Generalisability and potential limitations

The research has a very detailed basis. The researchers say that so far its impact on practice has been slight (some of it challenges what might be seen as ‘intuitively’ right) but that the impact of research findings on educational practice is increasing – the article is from 2011. Their findings are supported by large numbers of studies and they say that the finding on the advantages of ‘spacing’ is one of the most robust in the history of research on learning.

Find out more

The article is freely downloadable from https://teaching.yale-nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2016/02/Making-Things-Hard-on-Yourself-but-in-a-Good-Way-2011.pdf