Spaced learning

Spaced learning is a teaching method in which the educational content is repeated three times, with two 10-minute breaks during which physical activity is performed by the students. It is based on the mechanism for creating long term memories reported by R. Douglas Fields in Scientific American. This discovery was developed into a teaching method by Paul Kelley, the headmaster of Monkseaton High School.

Recently a complete lesson of Spaced Learning along with additional supporting material has been put on the web at www.monkseaton.org.uk . This web-based resource is nothing if not surprising, offering a full Spaced Learning session, comments from students and staff, and additional supporting materials. It is clear that the initial concept has been transformed into a kind of learning that has no obvious parallels in conventional education^{[citation needed]}. This then makes the origins of the term Spaced Learning clearer. It is a disturbingly different approach where the compression of learning reaches exceptional levels, yet it seems to work.

The Innovation Unit and others have subsequently created an online resource on Spaced Learning, expanding the version that was originally on the Monkseaton High School web site. This can be downloaded and distributed freely to others [1].

Earlier descriptions of the process did not use the phrase 'spaced learning'. When the initial reports of outcomes were published, media seized upon the condensed learning content as the key element in the approach used at Kelley's school and the BBC national television news, The Sunday Times, The Independent, and The Economist reported the approach largely in those terms ('8 minute lessons'). This emphasis was misplaced, since spaced learning depends on the length and number of the spaces, not the content presentation (which can vary). However, this misunderstanding was also included in reports in the educational press, notably The Times Educational Supplement. The description of the approach as 'spaced learning', clarifying the importance of the spaces, only appeared later (see Monkseaton's website). Additional research reported in The Times Educational Supplement, The Guardian, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph on 30 January 2009 indicated that spaced learning could successfully prepare students for a national examination in less than two hours with no traditional teaching at all.

The use of the term 'spaced' reflects the distinction in other research between 'spaced training' and 'massed training' where there have been conflicting results reported (for example,see spaced repetition). Spaced training is repeated training experiences separated by spaces (timed gaps often), massed training is a continuous block of training. It may be that Fields' discoveries resolve these issues by specifying the number of spaces and the length of the spaces based on the fundamental cellular processes.

The significance of spaced learning may prove important in different ways:

1. as a demonstration that neuroscience is now producing outcomes that can be directly implemented in education- as asserted by Kelley
2. as a demonstration that conventional patterns of learning in formal education are fundamentally flawed
3. as a demonstration that primary neuroscientific research has major implications for society

or, alternatively, that scientific discoveries that appear promising solutions in learning are not, in the end, as effective as they seem. The initial results for spaced learning are promising, but the approach needs testing in many different contexts before being accepted as an important contribution to learning theory.

Osiris Educational is the sole training provider to other teachers and educational institutions in the UK that works closely with Kelley's school.

External links

• Monkseaton original page about Spaced Learning method
• An essay about the latest findings in education and pedagogy
• Spaced learning toolkit by InnovationUnit