Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 220: What Interleaved Practice Teaches Us About Real Learning

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Ep 220: What Interleaved Practice Teaches Us About Real Learning · New Teacher Talk

Welcome to New Teacher Talk.
I'm Dr.
Beth Wilkins.
And I'm Dr.
Anna Quinzio-Zafran.
This fall, we're running a special series with Dr.
Ken King on the Science of Learning,
the research on how students actually learn and remember,
and how you can put it to work in your own classroom.
First up is Interleaved Practice,
the idea that mixing up problem types and topics can build
stronger,
more flexible learning than working through them one block
at a time.
Ken breaks down what it is, why it works,
and how to try it.
Let's dig in.
Working with teachers over the years,
I've observed that teachers and teacher candidates seek to
make learning as painless as possible.
We work hard to eliminate frustration, reduce confusion,
and help students experience success.
Yet learning theory suggests that the process of
integrating new knowledge into existing mental frameworks
is often accompanied by struggle.
In fact,
some of the most effective learning experiences feel less
successful in the moment because they require greater
mental effort.
Today's topic, interleaved practice,
illustrates this idea perfectly.
Students often find interleaved practice more difficult
than traditional approaches.
They make more mistakes during practice and frequently
report that they are learning less.
Yet research consistently shows that this temporary
struggle can produce stronger long-term retention,
greater transfer of learning,
and a deeper understanding of concepts.
The challenge of interleaved practice is not a flaw in the
strategy, it's one of the reasons it works.
My name is Ken King,
and I'm a professor of education at Aurora University in
Aurora, Illinois.
Today, I'm going to discuss Interleaved Practice.
I will explain the learning science that supports this
instructional strategy and share several practical ways
teachers can incorporate it into classroom instruction.
Before discussing interleaved practice,
it's important to understand the instructional approach
that is most often compared against, blocked practice.
Blocked practice occurs when students work on one type of
problem, skill,
or concept repeatedly before moving on to another.
A math teacher might assign 20 fraction addition problems
before introducing subtraction.
A basketball coach might have athletes take 50 free throws
before practicing layups.
In both cases, learners focus on a single skill at a time.
There are good reasons why blocked practice is so common in
schools.
When students are first learning something new,
repetition helps them understand the basic procedure and
develop confidence.
Teachers can provide focused instruction,
students experience early success,
and errors are easy to identify and correct.
During blocked practice,
performance often improves rapidly,
creating the impression that learning is progressing
smoothly.
Research suggests that blocked practice can be especially
valuable during the early stages of learning.
Students need opportunities to acquire foundational
knowledge, become familiar with procedures,
and reduce the cognitive demands associated with a
completely new task.
If interleaving is so effective,
it's reasonable to ask why blocked practice remains the
dominant instructional approach in schools.
The answer is that blocked practice creates the appearance
of successful learning.
Students answer more questions correctly,
make fewer mistakes,
and often feel confident that they have mastered the
material.
Teachers observe the success and naturally conclude that
learning is occurring.
In many ways,
blocked practice is rewarding for both students and
teachers because improvement is visible and immediate.
The challenge is that immediate performance is not always a
reliable indicator of long-term learning.
Students may become proficient at performing a procedure in
a highly structured environment without developing the
ability to recognize when that procedure should be used in
the future.
As a result,
blocked practice is often effective for introducing new
material, building familiarity,
and developing procedural fluency.
However, by itself,
it does not provide a complete or long-term means of
integrating new knowledge into practice.
So let's talk about what is interleaved practice.
Before discussing these benefits,
it's important to emphasize that interleaving is not a
replacement for initial instruction.
Students generally need some level of foundational
knowledge and understanding before interleaving becomes
productive.
When learners are encountering a concept for the first
time,
focused instruction and some blocked practice can help them
develop initial understanding and procedural fluency.
Interleaving is most effective after students possess a
basic grasp of the material.
Teachers should think of blocked practice as helping
students acquire a skill,
and interleaving as helping them retain, retrieve,
and apply that skill over time.
Blocked practice in mathematics look like this.
I'm going to use letters of the alphabet to represent a,
a single concept like, uh, addition or subtraction,
but it might look in this way.
A, A, A, B, B, B, C, C, C.
Students first practice one concept repeatedly,
then move on to a second concept, and finally to a third.
Interleaved practice rearranges the same opportunities.
A, B, C, B, A, C, C, A, B.
Different concepts, skills,
or problem types are mixed together during practice rather
than grouped in separate blocks.
For example, while students are learning division,
practice assignments might include division problems
alongside previously learned multiplication, addition,
and subtraction problems.
The central idea is that students must determine which
strategy applies rather than simply repeating the same
procedure over and over.
At first glance, interleaved practice appears inefficient.
Students make more mistakes,
take longer to complete assignments,
and often feel less confident.
Yet decades of research demonstrate that interleaving
frequently produces stronger long-term retention and more
effective transfer than blocked practice.
There's several reasons why Interleaved Practice works.
First one is under the category of discrimination errors.
One of the most important goals of learning is not simply
remembering information,
but knowing when and how to apply it.
Students frequently struggle because they can s-use similar
concepts, procedures, or problem types.
The author Rohrer refers to these mistakes as
discrimination errors,
failures to distinguish between concepts that appear
similar but require different interpretations or responses.
Interleaved practice directly addresses the challenge by
placing related concepts side by side,
forcing learners to compare and contrast them.
While block practice helps students recognize common
features within a category,
interleaving helps them identify the critical difference
between categories.
By repeatedly asking, "What kind of problem is this?" Or,
"Which concept applies here?" Students learn to attend to
the features that truly matter.
This process of discrimination learning is essential for
long-term retention and transfer because real-world
situations rarely announce which strategy should be used.
Whether in mathematics, science, language learning,
or other disciplines,
success depends on accurately distinguishing among similar
alternatives.
Second reason interleaving works is how memory develops
over time.
This has to do with retrieval strength and storage
strength.
During block practice,
students often solve the same kind of problem several times
in succession.
Because the procedure remains active in working memory,
retrieval is relatively easy.
Students can continue using what is already available in
their minds.
Interleaving changes this process.
After working on one concept,
students encounter several others before returning to the
original material.
When that original concept reappears,
students must retrieve it from long-term memory rather than
simply continuing a routine that's already active.
Bjork and Bjork distinguished between retrieval strength
and storage strength.
Retrieval strength refers to how accessible information is
at a particular moment.
Storage strength refers to how deeply information is
embedded in long-term memory.
Interleaving intentionally allows retrieval strength to
decline by introducing other concepts between practice
opportunities.
While this makes learning feel more difficult,
successfully retrieving the information again strengthens
the storage strength.
Every time students must reload a concept after practicing
something else,
they strengthen the memory pathways that help them access
that knowledge in the future.
This helps explain why students often misjudge their own
learning.
Block practice creates the feeling of mastery because
retrieval is easy.
Interleaving creates durable learning because retrieval
must be repeatedly earned.
A third explanation comes from the theory of desirable
difficulties.
Again, Bjork and Bjork,
they use this term to describe learning conditions that
make practice more challenging while improving long-term
learning.
Interleaving is one of the most powerful examples of a
desirable difficulty.
Students frequently report that interleaved practice feels
harder because it requires them to identify problem types,
retrieve previously learned procedures,
compare similar concepts,
and resist interference from competing strategies.
During practice, performance often declines.
However,
the goal of instruction is not to simply maximize performance
during practice.
The goal is to create learning that remains accessible
days, weeks, and months later.
The additional mental effort required by interleaving
forces learners to engage in deeper processing and repeated
retrieval, along with more careful decision-making.
What feels like struggle during learning often becomes
strength during later performance.
Transfer learning is another consideration.
The ultimate goal of learning is not simply remembering
information in the setting where it was taught.
Educational psychologists use the term transfer to describe
students' abilities to apply learning in a new situation.
A student may successfully solve a problem that looks
exactly like one practiced yesterday.
True understanding is demonstrated when that student
recognizes that the same concept applies in a different
context.
Interleaving supports transfer because students must
continually determine what kind of problem they are facing
and which strategy is appropriate.
Rather than memorizing procedures in isolation,
students learn to recognize situations in which those
procedures should be used.
This ability to transfer learning from one context to
another is one of the most important outcomes of effective
instruction.
The good news is that teachers do not need to redesign
their entire curriculum to benefit from interleaving.
Small adjustments in how practice opportunities are
organized can produce meaningful results.
I'd like to share three practical applications that you can
put to work right away.
For example, in elementary mathematics,
let's say grade four, after teaching multiplication,
division, fractions, and measurement,
many teachers assign practice sets focused on a single
skill.
An interleaved alternative is to create a daily practice
set that mixes several previously learned problem types.
Instead of assigning ten multiplication problems,
a teacher might include multiplication, division,
fractions,
and measurement problems within the same assignment.
Students must determine which operation or procedure is
appropriate for each problem,
strengthening both discrimination, learning, and retrieval.
In middle school science,
students frequently encounter concepts that are easily
confused.
During a unit on ecosystems,
students might study mutualism, commensuralism, parasitism,
predation, and competition.
Rather than studying each relationship in isolation,
a teacher can regularly present mixed examples and ask
students to identify which relationship is representative.
Because examples are interleaved,
students must focus on the distinguishing characteristics
of each concept rather than relying on simple memorization.
At the high school level,
many English classes teach one literary device at a time.
Interleaving can be introduced through cumulative analysis
activities.
When reading a new text,
students might be asked to identify symbolism, irony,
characterization, theme,
and foreshadowing within the same assignment.
Students must retrieve knowledge from previous units while
engaging with new content,
strengthening long-term retention and analytical
flexibility.
There's a common thread through all of these.
These examples come from different grade levels and
disciplines.
They do share the same principle.
Students are repeatedly required to determine what they are
looking at before deciding what to do with it.
Rather than practicing a single skill in isolation,
learners must retrieve prior knowledge,
discriminate among alternatives,
and select the appropriate response.
These are the very conditions that make learning more
durable, transferable, and useful beyond the classroom.
In closing,
one of the most important lessons from learning science is
that performance and learning are not the same thing.
What feels easy during practice is not always what produces
the strongest learning.
Interleaved practice challenges students to retrieve
information, distinguish among concepts,
and select appropriate strategies.
While these demands make learning feel more difficult,
they also produce stronger retention and greater transfer
over time.
I provided a reading list to accompany this podcast.
You might find that the book Powerful Teaching by Agarwal
and Bain is a great read and offers important insights into
how learning takes place and how you can use this
information to make a difference.
Thank you for joining me today.
Be sure to follow New Teacher Talk on Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can also find and follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky @
NewTeacherTalk.
Teachers do not become experts overnight.
Early in your career is an ideal time to experiment with
research-supported instructional practices and thoughtfully
incorporate them into your teaching.
Interleaved practice offers one practical strategy you can
begin using immediately to help students build learning
that lasts.
That wraps up today's episode.
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Until next time, take care.