Humo’s article then goes on with lots of pointers from Tim and Paul, from the simple one of avoiding coloured pens to underline important parts of texts until you have grasped the main concepts and ideas behind a text to more general recommendations like starting on time – trying to revise everything in the final days before an exam with no other preparation is never a good idea.

A significant part of the research which backs up Tim and Paul’s input to Humo comes from their article in the ScienceDirect Journal which was published recently entitled 'The coverage of distributed practice and retrieval practice in Flemish and Dutch teacher education textbooks'. This article investigates how well, or otherwise, teachers are being educated about effective learning strategies as part of their pre-service training. The two strategies that were chosen for study were distributed practice where repeated sessions of study and practice are spaced over a longer period of time and retrieval practice which involves the taking of a practice test . The results indicated that textbooks mostly fail to fully represent these strategies and goes on to discuss the implications this has on educational practice.

This is an open access article which you can read in full.

Want to know more about Tim’s research? Then there is still time to sign up for a training day being organised by VELOV in Antwerpen on Tuesday 12 June where he will be speaking.