The Path to Learning: Practice, Pause, Repeat, Empower
Repetition and distributed practice fortify neural pathways and knowledge.
Updated September 30, 2025 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina
THE BASICS
Key points
- Research shows that repetition and distributed practice are effective teaching strategies.
- Explicit teaching plays a significant role in developing reading and writing skills.
- Sequence learning is a crucial consideration in all areas of learning, spanning all fields and endeavors.
Source: Hey Juda/Pixabay
Research indicates that repetition and distributed practice effectively fires and rewires the brain, thereby strengthening memory and improving learning potential. This approach aims to develop and refine skills, knowledge, insights, and understanding. Repetition involves intentionally practising the same action, skill, or information, which research shows can create more complex neural connections, reinforce, and enhance memory, learning, skills, and knowledge through consistent repetition and distributed practice.
Distributed practice involves spreading these repetitions across different times instead of focusing them into one session. The research suggests that this method may also develop a deeper consolidation of skills, insights, and knowledge, and, importantly, enhance understanding, thereby achieving the potential for mastery of the task in question (Cepeda et al., 2006).
Education
From an educational perspective, this process of repetition and distributed practice, according to research, helps build the neurological, cognitive, and intellectual foundation in which literacy and numeracy development, insights, and understanding can be enhanced.
The importance of repetition, distributed practice, explicit teaching and sequence learning are especially important during the first three years of school (and, of course, beyond). That is because these pedgogical principles lay the foundations in the development of literacy, numeracy skills and knowledge, critical thinking, and higher-order thinking. However, for this to happen, there is a strict requirement for motivation, application, commitment, and effort to be consistently maintained (Meiers et al., 2006; Walsh et al., 2023; Wiseheart et al., 2019).
The MACE Principle
Source: faizan ali/Pixabay
In terms of literacy and numeracy development, these processes provide the neurological and cognitive scaffolding that enable children (both in literacy and numeracy) to progress from basic recognition of symbols to fluency, comprehension, and creative reasoning of what these symbols are presenting and intellectually advancing.
To further develop this potential, in addition to repetition and distributed practice, one should also consider, as noted, applying the MACE principle: Motivation mobilizes merit, Application advances achievements, Commitment creates competence, and Effort enhances excellence. All of these principles involve unrelenting discipline, dedication, determination, and hard work, for the ultimate purpose of advancing skills, knowledge, understanding, and enhancing erudite insights in all tasks, fields, and endeavors, as well as devloping intrinsic capacities of perseverance and resilience; which can also be described as strength of character. When the going gets tough, the tough keep going (Purje, 2025).
When this occurs, the suggestion is that cognitive and intellectual growth then enables learners to progress from simply recognizing numbers and the letters of the alphabet to the point where the brain and mind can successfully decode these individual numbers and letters.
This then leads to where the learners are now identifying and understanding numerical algorithms and whole words; which are then constructively applied into more advanced numerical understandings and higher levels of narrative texts. These results indicate that critical thinking and higher-order thinking skills have developed and are being applied (Baroody, 2006; Cepeda et al., 2006; Ehri, 2005; Mawson & Kang, 2025; Walsh et al., 2023; Wiseheart et al., 2019).
Explicit Teaching
Source: Dorothe/Pixabay
Equally important to all of this is the role of explicit teaching. The literature suggests that explicit teaching, particularly in the areas of phonological awareness and phonics, is crucial for developing and refining reading and writing skills, and advacing what is meant by literacy.
By analyzing the link between sounds and symbols, the research demonstrates that explicit teaching of phonics enables all learners to decode (all of the symbols, that are now creating words) accurately and efficiently. When combined with repetition, rote drills, and distributed practice, these methods support the development of these fundamental literacy and numeracy skills that eventually become automatic, allowing for greater cognitive engagement, intellectual growth, understanding, critical analysis, insights and creativity.
Evaluating And Synthesizing Information
Once the fundamentals are mastered through repeated explicit teaching practice, repetition and distributed practice (which directly changes the brain and mind), learners now are also develop more complex neural connections and deeper cognitive skills. These advancement in the brain and of the mind self-evidently provides the potential for these learner to now be able to better evaluate and synthesize information more critically and effectively at higher levels of understanding. All of which advances their knowledge (Castles et al., 2018; Ehri, 2005; Fletcher et al., 2021; Foorman et al., 1998; Murphy, 2021).
Building on the educational benefits of explicit teaching, research shows that highly effective teachers are those who apply these explicit teaching principles and practices. According to Hammond and Moore (2018), citing the New South Wales Department of Education and the Communities’ Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, these organizations report, the explicit teaching approach is regarded as a crucial factor in not only recognizing outstanding teachers; the explicit teaching method also offers the educational benefits of improving and advancing student learning outcomes. This process is also connected with sequence learning (Curran & Keele, 1993; Hammond & Moore, 2018; Kyriakides et al., 2013; Rosenshine, 2012; Starzyk & He, 2007)
Sequence Learning
Source: Erik/Pixabay
According to Starzyk and He (2007), “temporal sequence learning is one of the most critical components for human intelligence.” This includes, but is not limited to, language development, reasoning and planning, speech recognition, writing skills, skill acquisition, and the growth of knowledge and creativity across all fields, professions, trades, sports, sciences, humanities, music, and the arts, in fact, all disciplines where learning is taking place.
Therefore, the process of sequence learning should be regarded as an important pedagogical and educational tool across all fields where skills and knowledge are developed and refined. Overall, the evidence suggests that explicit teaching, repetition, distributed practice, and sequence learning are essential for developing and enhancing skills, knowledge, and achievements (Curran & Keele, 1993; Hammond & Moore, 2018).
The Importance of Physical Play and Empathy
In relation to children’s learning, an associated and important consideration to keep in mind is that, from the moment of birth, children need to live in an enriched environment where face-to-face communication should be considered as the primary and ulimate method of interaction.
Source: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay
The research is unambiguous; it is the human connection (absent from all devices) that enhances the development of the complex brain, the mind, imagination, language potential, attachment, empathy, and all the other immense holistic qualities that shape the brain, mind, body and the thinking of a developing child, and also the developing adolescent, and eventual rational, ethical adult.
All of these are connected to repetition, distributed practice, sequence learning, perseverance and resilience. Further to this the absolute crucial importance of physical play cannot be overstated. Devices and technology are not substitutes for physical play and human contact. In fact, it is physical play that builds the brain, the mind, the body and all of this creates imagination potential, develops emotions, social understandings, resilience, and, as noted, the holistic mind and body of children, adolescents, and adults.
Without physical play, there is no empathy, Theory of Mind, and successful cognitive, intellectual, physical and emotional development. Ultimately, without empathy, humanity is at risk.
References
Baroody, A. J. (2006). Why children have difficulties mastering the basic number combinations and how to help them. Teaching Children Mathematics, 13(1), 22–31.
Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5–51.
Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380.
Curran, T., & Keele, S. W. (1993). Attentional and nonattentional forms of sequence learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19(1), 189–202.
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