#132: How Interleaving Works: Universal Strategies for Secondary School Classroom Practice

In my twenty years of teaching, I’ve come across numerous pedagogical techniques designed to boost student learning, but few have been as transformative as interleaving. This technique, backed by cognitive science, has the power to enhance long-term retention and application of knowledge: yet it remains underutilised in many secondary school classrooms. Today, I want to explore generalisable rules for interleaving (a structured approach that any secondary school teacher can apply) and one that, to my knowledge, has never been formally outlined before. 

• Accompanying blog post: https://richardjamesrogers.com/2025/03/09/how-interleaving-works-universal-strategies-for-secondary-school-classroom-practice/
• Check out my award-winning book for teachers, The Quick Guide to Classroom Management?: 45 Secrets That All High School Teachers Need to Know, here: https://www.amazon.com/Quick-Guide-Classroom-Management-Teachers-dp-B08VCQPF2L/dp/B08VCQPF2L/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
• Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society, 56-64.
• Pan, S. C., Tajran, J., Lovelett, J., Osuna, J., & Rickard, T. C. (2019). Does interleaved practice enhance foreign language learning? The effects of training schedule on vocabulary learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(8), 1172–1181.
• Rohrer, D., & Taylor, K. (2007). The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning. Instructional Science, 35(6), 481-498.
• Keep, B. (2022) ‘The spaced practice effect: what it is and how to leverage it’, Benjamin Keep, 15 December. Available at: https://www.benjaminkeep.com/the-spaced-practice-effect-what-it-is-and-how-to-leverage-it/ (Accessed: 9 March 2025).
• Rogers, R. (2022) ‘Deep learning vs surface learning’, Richard James Rogers, 24 May. Available at: https://richardjamesrogers.com/2022/05/24/deep-learning-vs-surface-learning/ (Accessed: 9 March 2025).