[udit99]

Interesting. I don't mean to detract from your main point but as someone who's deeply into spaced repetition for the past 5-7 years (Daily Anki user + built my own spaced repetition systems for learning various skills), I find myself disagreeing with you on some things that you mentioned:

1. Spaced Repetition is not a fad. It's the most consistent and reliable way we we know for rote memorization (conditions apply). And it's not a new thing either. It's been around since the late 1800s. It just wasnt practical until the advent of computers and mobile devices. So I'm skeptical that there is another "something else" to move on to that is as impactful as SRS.

2. Not sure what the state of education in Australia these days but speaking strictly from my school days in India (1980s-1990s), something like spaced repetition would have been a godsend for every single student. And I'm 100% sure a vast majority of schools and teachers still havent heard of it.

3. I've been learning German for the past few years from some of the top private institutes in Vienna, Austria and let me tell you that neither the teacher, nor the students have any idea about spaced repetition.

That said, you're probably right about the business-viability of such ventures because of the difficulty of selling to the decision-makers, I just strongly disagree about Spaced Repetition being a "flavor of the year"

[cjs_ac]

Sure, but there are all sorts of pendulum shifts in the teaching zeitgeist. Spaced repetition was just an app-based example: it's been a few years since I was in the classroom so I'm not sure what the flavour of the year is, but if spaced repetition were currently popular amongst schoolteachers, the swing away from it that I would expect to see would be to argue that memorisation isn't really learning and that learning experiences should be about developing deeper understanding, and so on. There is no measure of 'best practice'; a lot of these shifts are driven by personal preference.

[udit99]

> argue that memorisation isn't really learning and that learning experiences should be about developing deeper understanding, Agreed, but if you ask anyone who's SR for any amount of time will tell you: It's realllly hard to be effective with it if you don't understand the underlying concept. The order of operations is "first understand, then drill". Of course, this comes with nuance. There are things that just have to be drilled and others that don't even need any drilling if you understand the concept. And I'd expect those educators to know the difference.

> There is no measure of 'best practice'; a lot of these shifts are driven by personal preference.

Again, you're probably right but using the example of SR threw me off because it's the one thing where I think the data is so clear that it's easily justifiable.

[sokoloff]

I didn’t read GP as making a judgment that spaced repetition was new or a fad, but rather that in the environment of how education decision-makers shift focus to new things, it’s a current flavor-of-the-year.

We saw elements of this with “new math”, Singapore math, and common core math, each label of fairly similar concepts promising to improve kids’ facility with math. Test scores haven’t leapt though.

[udit99]

Yeah, you're probably right. I agree that the problem might be shifting focus every year but the one difference with your math examples is that Singapore Math/Common Core math etc. all seem like different systems that don't build on top of each other. You (I'm assuming here) can't focus on Singapore Math one year, then the next year to add Common Core math on top of that etc. Its one or the other.

Spaced repetition on the other hand is a cross-disciplinary technique that just needs to be introduced and kept there. There's nothing else out there to substitute it with. If the young staff hype it up one year and then it becomes part of the curriculum and then they move on to other fancy edtech things, then there's nothing wrong with it.