Literature Review Example: A Full APA 7 Sample With Synthesis Notes

Student Name

Department of Education, University Name

EDUC 640: Learning and Instruction

Instructor Name

15 September 2026

Retrieval Practice in Secondary Classrooms: A Review of the Evidence

Retrieval practice, recalling information from memory rather than rereading it, is among the most consistently supported findings in cognitive psychology, yet its use in secondary classrooms remains uneven. This review covers peer-reviewed studies published between 2006 and 2021. It draws on laboratory work with college students where that work defines the effect, but its focus is studies that measured retention or exam performance in middle and high school learners. Sources were located through ERIC and PsycINFO and are organized thematically rather than by publication date, because the field's disagreements track method and setting, not chronology.

Note 1 (scope sentence): The scope states three boundaries at once, the date range, the learners, and the outcome measured, so a reader knows what the review covers before the synthesis begins.

Three questions structure the review. First, does the laboratory effect survive the move into real classrooms, with real curricula and real grades? Second, does the format of the quiz, recall or recognition, change the size of the benefit? Third, what limits the effect for secondary teachers who want to use it?

Laboratory and Classroom Evidence

Laboratory work established the basic effect under controlled conditions before classroom studies tested whether it transfers to applied settings. Repeated recall of studied material produces stronger long-term retention than repeated rereading (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006; Karpicke & Roediger, 2008), and this finding held up in an eighth-grade science classroom, where low-stakes quizzes improved unit-exam performance on quizzed material compared with material covered only by normal instruction (McDaniel et al., 2011).

Note 2 (synthesis, three sources): One sentence draws on two laboratory studies and one classroom study to make a single claim about transfer. That merge, rather than a paragraph per study, is what synthesis means.

The laboratory studies also explain why students underuse the strategy. In Roediger and Karpicke (2006), rereading produced slightly better recall five minutes after study, while testing produced clearly better recall days later, so the method that feels stronger in the moment is the weaker one over time. Karpicke and Roediger (2008) sharpened the point with foreign-language word pairs: continuing to test items already recalled once raised later retention substantially, while continuing to restudy them added little. In both studies, learners' predictions of their own performance did not track these differences, which suggests that classroom adoption cannot rely on students discovering the benefit for themselves.

An applied project in a middle school extended this further, reporting that low-stakes quizzing with feedback improved retention across subjects and helped students judge what they had and had not yet learned (Agarwal et al., 2012). Together, these lines of evidence, tightly controlled lab studies, a single-classroom trial, and a multi-year applied project, point in the same direction even though their settings differ sharply in realism and control.

The classroom studies also change what counts as success. Laboratory studies typically measure recall of word lists or prose passages after a delay. Classroom studies measure the outcome teachers and students care about: performance on a unit exam that counts toward a grade. That the effect survives this shift is the strongest single argument for classroom adoption, and it is why this review weights the classroom evidence more heavily than the laboratory work that preceded it.

Format and Delivery Effects

Not every format produces the same size effect, and here the literature holds a genuine disagreement. Karpicke and Blunt (2011) found that retrieval practice outperformed elaborative studying with concept mapping, a format many instructors assume builds deeper understanding, even on tests requiring inference. A meta-analysis of the wider testing-effect literature found that recall-format tests, where students generate the answer, produce larger gains than recognition-format tests, where students select it (Rowland, 2014). Read in isolation, that finding would suggest multiple-choice quizzing is the weaker classroom option. McDermott et al. (2014), however, found that multiple-choice and short-answer quizzes enhanced later exam performance by similar amounts in middle and high school classes.

Note 3 (disagreement handled): The conflict is named, then resolved by design: Rowland pools mostly single-session lab comparisons, while McDermott's quizzes ran with feedback across whole units, which plausibly narrows the format gap.

For a secondary teacher, the practical reading is that format matters less than frequency and feedback. A multiple-choice quiz that students finish in five minutes and review with the answers visible appears to deliver most of the benefit of a short-answer quiz that takes longer to write and grade.

Boundary Conditions in Secondary Classrooms

The largest applied synthesis to date, a systematic review of about 50 classroom experiments with more than 5,000 students, found medium or large benefits in more than half of the comparisons, across grade levels, subjects, and quiz formats (Agarwal et al., 2021). An earlier review of ten common learning techniques rated practice testing as high utility while noting that more evidence was needed with complex, course-relevant materials (Dunlosky et al., 2013), a caveat the newer classroom synthesis only partly closes. A meta-analysis of practice testing confirmed that the benefit holds across a wide range of settings and test formats, with its size varying by features of the study design (Adesope et al., 2017).

Two limits matter most for secondary teachers. The first is time: every quiz takes minutes away from new instruction, and the reviewed studies rarely report that cost. The second is stakes: the classroom studies used low-stakes quizzes, so the evidence does not show whether the same benefit appears when quizzes count heavily toward a grade.

Across the classroom studies reviewed here, the quizzes were designed, timed, and corrected by the teacher. None of them isolates student-directed retrieval, practice that students schedule and check on their own outside class, across a full semester in a single secondary subject. That comparison, teacher-led against student-led retrieval, is the research gap this review's own project addresses.

Note 4 (gap statement): The gap is stated as a missing comparison, teacher-led against student-led retrieval, not as a general call for "more research."

Read together, these ten sources support a real but bounded claim: retrieval practice measurably improves secondary students' retention and exam performance across quiz formats and subjects, though the classroom evidence rests almost entirely on quizzes that teachers design and correct. For practice, the evidence supports short, frequent, low-stakes quizzes with feedback, in whichever format a teacher can sustain. For research, it points toward the student-led comparison described above, which would show whether the benefit survives once the teacher steps out of the loop.

Note 5 (why thematic, not chronological): Organizing by theme lets the Rowland and McDermott findings meet inside one section. A chronological structure would report both accurately but never force them into contact.

References

Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659-701. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316689306

Agarwal, P. K., Bain, P. M., & Chamberlain, R. W. (2012). The value of applied research: Retrieval practice improves classroom learning and recommendations from a teacher, a principal, and a scientist. Educational Psychology Review, 24, 437-448. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-012-9210-2

Agarwal, P. K., Nunes, L. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2021). Retrieval practice consistently benefits student learning: A systematic review of applied research in schools and classrooms. Educational Psychology Review, 33(4), 1409-1453. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09595-9

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772-775. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199327

Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319(5865), 966-968. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1152408

McDaniel, M. A., Agarwal, P. K., Huelser, B. J., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger, H. L. (2011). Test-enhanced learning in a middle school science classroom: The effects of quiz frequency and placement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(2), 399-414. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021782

McDermott, K. B., Agarwal, P. K., D'Antonio, L., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Both multiple-choice and short-answer quizzes enhance later exam performance in middle and high school classes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20(1), 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000004

Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x

Rowland, C. A. (2014). The effect of testing versus restudy on retention: A meta-analytic review of the testing effect. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1432-1463. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037559