How much does retrieval practice help in learning?

Students do forget things, we measure the effectiveness of the retrieval practice based upon how much they have remembered it. 
But forgetting doesn't mean that students have unlearned what they have learned. Neither learning means remembering things.

Paul Hewitt Physics


Yes, the best strategy to get a high score is retrieval practice. But high score relies on the ability to recall things, not test the actual learning.

We need not have to do retrieval practice to do programming,  just re-reading and using the code is enough. The best way to learn to program is to use and apply it the hard way. The more you use it and apply better strategies, the more better your programming skill will be.
The same principle applies to all subjects, whether its maths, physics, biology or philosophy.

What is required is understanding of the subject, through strategies like the Feynman Technique. Understanding creates an index in your brain, which later can be used to retrieve the whole research from online article or books.

It doesn't matter whether you are explaining by looking at the book or not, as long as you are thinking about any plausible queries and able to explain the answers to a 5 to 12 year-old.



The craze of Retrieval Practice thrives because of test scores, what if we don't give marks, we peer review the student thinking process and give feedback. We ask them to do things and improve their resume.
If high test scores were the best way to measure learning,
we wouldn't have 7.7 billion people, still increasing
we wouldn't have insects dying
we wouldn't have air pollution to such an extent
we wouldn't have ocean pollution with 8 million metric tons of plastic in it

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