Research School Network: Why do students forget what they once understood? Part of the Big Question series: exploring why some learning lasts and some learning fades.

The Big Question Series

Teaching involves making hundreds of decisions every day. Many of those decisions are shaped by bigger questions about how pupils learn, what motivates them and how schools can help them succeed. Each webinar in The Big Question Series starts with one of those questions and explores what the evidence can tell us about it. Along the way, we will examine different perspectives, consider the implications for practice and reflect on what this might mean for our own classrooms.

Why do students forget what they once understood?

In this session, we will explore what the evidence can tell us about why some learning lasts and some learning fades. We will examine memory, retrieval, spacing, prior knowledge and curriculum design, and consider how these ideas can support durable learning.