Spaced Learning had been developed by Kelley and his team over years and rather confusingly was not called 'Spaced Learning' at first.4 Earlier descriptions of Spaced Learning often led to its being misunderstood, and the scientific origins of the approach ignored. When the initial reports of outcomes were made public, media seized upon the condensed learning content as the key element in the approach used and the BBC national television news, The Sunday Times, The Independent, and The Economist5 reported the approach largely in those terms ('8 minute lessons'). This emphasis was misplaced, since Spaced Learning as a method depends on the length and number of the spaces (Fields' 'temporal code'), not the content presentation (which can vary). However, this misunderstanding was also included in reports in the educational press, notably The Times Educational Supplement.6
The description of the approach as 'Spaced Learning', clarifying the importance of the spaces, only appeared later. Additional research reported in The Times Educational Supplement, The Guardian, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph on 30 January 2009 reported that Spaced Learning successfully prepared 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 retrieval practice – trying to recover long-term memories quickly and accurately – is the subject of a different line of research but also shows that spaced practice (for example, taking a practice test every month) is more effective than massed practice.
The significance of Spaced Learning may prove important in different ways:
R.Douglas Fields (February 2005), Making Memories Stick, Scientific American, pp. 58–63 /wiki/Scientific_American ↩
Paul Kelley (2008), Making Minds: What's wrong with education- and what should we do about it?, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-41411-1 978-0-415-41411-1 ↩
Frontiers in Human Neurosciencehttp://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00589/abstract ↩
Patrick Barkham (13 Feb 2009), "A sixth of a GCSE in 60 minutes?", The Guardian, pp. G2 4–7 /wiki/The_Guardian ↩
The Sunday Times, 15 July 2007;The Independent, 15 September 2007; and The Economist, 2 June 2007 ↩
The Times Educational Supplement, 29 June 2007 ↩
Paul Kelley, Making Minds: What's wrong with education- and what should we do about it?, Routledge, London / New York,150-4 ↩