Fortunately, retrieval practice does not just enhance memorization, or rote recall of information. Though, students do need to be able to remember facts in order to apply them in new situations. For example, some have wondered:

“Shouldn’t education be about fostering a sense of wonder, discovery, and creativity in children?” (1), p. 243.

And here’s how we might reply to this concern:

“The answer to the question is yes, of course, but we would argue that a strong knowledge base is a prerequisite to being creative in a particular domain. A student is unlikely to make creative discoveries in any subject without a comprehensive set of facts and concepts at his or her command." (1), p. 243.

The good news is that retrieval practice does improve students’ abilities to think more deeply about the content they’ve learned, and to apply the information to situations that they have never experienced before (2). For example, in one of Megan’s studies, described in this post, students learned about the respiratory system. On the assessment, the question asked them to imagine a disease, like Polio, that paralyzes muscles. They were then asked to explain how this type of disease would affect the respiratory system. They had not read about polio or paralysis in the text, but if they had understood the system, they would be able to answer this novel question. The students were also asked about different types of environments, like ones with a lot of dust in the air. In another example, students learned about how energy transfers to the sun. They were then asked to explain why it rarely rains in the desert, where there are no large bodies of water.