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A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness and Boundary Conditions of Retrieval Practice, Distributed Practice, and Interleaved Practice in Authentic School Classrooms

Ruitenburg, Sterre K., Goos, Mieke, Lambert, Guus, Kirschner, Paul A., Jarodzka, Halszka, Camp, Gino·2026·Educational Psychology Review
DOI 10.1007/s10648-026-10225-5
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Abstract

While retrieval practice, distributed practice, and interleaved practice are considered three promising strategies for how, when, and in what sequence to practice after initial instruction or self-study, little is known about the average effects of these strategies in authentic classrooms in primary and secondary education and their moderators. Therefore, in the present study, we investigated the effectiveness and boundary conditions of retrieval, distributed, and interleaved practice in such classrooms. We did this using a three-level meta-analysis comprising 233 effect sizes from 53 studies (published 2006–2024) including 7,303 participants. We found (a) an average testing effect of g = 0.37, moderated by type of knowledge, posttest format, format matching between practice and test phase, and type of learning outcome, (b) an average spacing effect of g = 0.20, moderated by type of comparison condition, retention interval, the ISI/RI ratio (i.e., the interstudy interval expressed as proportion of the retention interval), and posttest format, and (c) an average interleaving effect of g = 0.40, moderated by provision and timing of feedback. Average effects suggest that the effectiveness of the three strategies extends to authentic school classrooms. Observed moderator patterns suggest that the testing, spacing, and interleaving effects only occur reliably if their underlying cognitive processes are elicited during practice. This, in turn, implies that we need to shift from a one-size-fits-all instructional approach to a context-dependent instructional approach.

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Metadata

Authors
Ruitenburg, S. K., Goos, M., Lambert, G., Kirschner, P. A., Jarodzka, H., & Camp, G.
Venue
Educational Psychology Review
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2026-10-29
Volume
38
Issue
1
ISSN
  • 1040-726X
  • 1573-336X
DOI
10.1007/s10648-026-10225-5
Cited by
0
References
26
Language
en
Licence
Funders
Dutch educational publisher ThiemeMeulenhoff

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

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This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness and Boundary Conditions of Retrieval Practice, Distributed Practice, and Interleaved Practice in Authentic School Classrooms. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1007/s10648-026-10225-5
The paper
Ruitenburg, S. K., Goos, M., Lambert, G., Kirschner, P. A., Jarodzka, H., & Camp, G. (2026). A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness and Boundary Conditions of Retrieval Practice, Distributed Practice, and Interleaved Practice in Authentic School Classrooms. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-026-10225-5

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.