Do worked examples boost the spacing effect on lasting learning?

Background

The acquisition of lasting knowledge that is accessible for a long time is an important educational goal. Spacing the learning or practice phase across multiple sessions fosters lasting learning, but the effect is less robust for complex material.

Aims

We examined whether the meaningful elaboration of the learning material, evoked by means of self-explaining worked examples, contributes to a more robust spacing effect concerning the lasting learning in mathematics.

Sample

Participants were fourth graders (N = 213).

Methods

Children received a formal instruction to long multiplication in school. Thereafter, they practiced the procedure either in a massed or a spaced manner, and either by pure problem solving or by additionally self-explaining worked examples in their regular math lessons. Time on task was held constant in all conditions. In a delayed test after eight weeks, children's procedural and conceptual knowledge was assessed. Their general math ability and their specific prior knowledge served as control variables.

Results

Contrary to our expectations, there was neither a main effect of worked examples nor of spacing, and no interaction emerged between the two variables. Exploratory analyses revealed the same results concerning the forgetting rate between the last practice set and the test. These null effects were confirmed by Bayesian analyses. Only children's general math ability and their prior knowledge predicted their test performance.

Conclusions

The results suggest that the spacing effect in mathematics does not emerge reliably, even not when stimulated by worked examples. Further research on potential boundary conditions is required.