The promise of effective study techniques is huge. Yet, throughout my teaching career, it's always proved a challenge to get students to independently use retrieval practice, space out their study, or even organise their resources and manage their time in more effective ways. This has always puzzled me, ‘How can they keep using these inefficient strategies when there's clearly a better way?'
But I recently came across the work of Mark McDaniels, which sheds some light onto both the barriers to strategy adoption, and how we may be able to turn the tide. (Paper 1 – theoretical, Paper 2 – more practical but behind a paywall, so make sure you don't use an illegal site like sci-hub to download it…)
To overcome students' reluctance to take on more effective study techniques McDaniels (and his colleague Gilles Einstein) propose the KBCP framework, standing for Knowledge, Belief, Commitment, Planning. This framework asserts that simply teaching students about more effective study techniques (Knowledge), is insufficient to change behaviour. Instead, students must also come to Believe in the efficacy of that strategy (not just in general, but for them specifically as well), feel Committed to adopting it, and have a concrete Plan for adoption too.
When I first came across this framework (through my podcast with Byers, Leighton, and Perry), I could see the potential in the approach, but I wasn't totally clear on what each of these four words meant in concrete terms, and in the classroom. So I've spent a bit of time over the past couple of weeks putting together the table below that hopefully makes it a bit clearer. I suggest reading through this table, row by row. Take your time, it's designed to clearly illuminate the key components of the framework.
| Component | How to train a students in this component | A student’s perspective after training (hopefully!) | More detail on student’s perspective, and the result |
| Knowledge | Provide ‘informed training' to students. That is, explicitly provide them with knowledge about what the strategy is, why it's effective, and when and how to apply it. Research: Borkowski et al., 1987; Cook & Mayer, 1988; Dansereau et al., 1979; see Donker et al., 2014, for a meta-analytic review | ‘Yeah, I can see this study technique works for some people, and I know how it works. But it probably won’t work for me.’ | Student may use the strategy in a controlled environment, and when prompted, but won't use it independently and quickly reverts to old habits. |
| Belief | Give students a direct experience of the success of the strategy (McDaniel calls these ‘participatory demonstrations'). For example, get them to try to learn a passage through re-reading, then get them to learn a similar passage through retrieval, and have them compare the results to build the belief that it will work for them specifically. Research: Brigham & Pressley, 1988; Bjork et al., 2011; deWinstanley & Bjork, 2004; Einstein et al., 2012 | ‘Wow, this strategy definitely works for me! Too bad it’s too much effort.’ | Students believe that the strategy works for them, but are still reluctant to use it because most it's likely more effort (desirably difficult) than their current, less effective, strategy. |
| Commitment | When students know that something will work for them, but can’t be bothered doing it, we need to increase their motivation. Motivational interventions can take a number of forms, but a simple approach is to have students reflect upon why success in the given subject is important for them. (Also see my valuable, easy, normal motivational framework in Tools for Teachers for more ideas) Research: Harackiewicz et al., 2016 Hulleman et al., 2017). And other approaches in McDaniel and Einstein (2020) such as self-attribution | ‘If I put in the effort to use this strategy, it’s going to result in a really great payoff for me! …I should probably do that some time' | Students recognise the value of success, and therefore the strategy to their lives. This means that they see the cost of taking on a new strategy as outweighed by the potential benefit of what they’ll gain from it. However, they're still prone to forget to use it. Habits are heard to break. |
| Planning | Help students to establish implementation intentions and action triggers, or to simply construct an action plan for implementation. Research: Gollwitzer, 1999, and Duckworth et al., 2013 | ‘I’m going to implement this strategy by (method) at (time and location) because I know it’s going to help me a lot!’ | Students use the new study technique independently. Success! |
To me, this framework makes a phenomenal amount of sense. Further, it gives me hope that, if I follow it, I may finally have greater success in helping the majority of my students to take on these more effective strategies. I plan to give it a crack over the coming months, and I'd love to hear from anyone who gives it a go too. Watch this space!