How do secondary students study for exams?

What the research has to say

In this study, researchers surveyed 385 students from 29 secondary schools to understand the different strategies students use when preparing for science exams. The study focused on nine key learning strategies:

• Using mind maps – Writing down a main topic and connecting it to related keywords, concepts, and facts.

• Highlighting information – Marking or underlining key details in study materials.

• Using flashcards – Writing important terms, facts, and information on small cards for quick review.

• Rereading notes – Reviewing class notes repeatedly.

• Summarising – Writing brief summaries of study materials.

• Spaced practice – Spreading out study sessions over time rather than cramming.

• Retrieval Practice – Testing oneself by recalling information from memory, often through practice tests.

• Interleaved practice – Studying different but related topics or types of problems in one session.

• Elaboration – Connecting new information to what is already known to deepen understanding.

To explore these strategies, students answered questions about how often they used each method, their understanding of different strategies, and how frequently they studied science each week. Let’s take a look at the main findings of the study:

1. Students preferred easy but ineffective learning strategies

In the first part of the survey, students rated how often they used each of the nine study strategies on a scale from 1 (never) to 5 (always). The most commonly used strategies were summarising, rereading, and highlighting, each with an average score of 3.5. In contrast, strategies proven to be more effective were used less, with students rating them as follows:

• Retrieval Practice – 2.7
• Spaced practice – 2.6
• Elaboration – 1.7
• Interleaved practice – 1.3

A similar pattern emerged when looking at the percentage of students using each strategy. Many students regularly used summarising, rereading, and highlighting. However, fewer students practiced retrieval, elaboration, or interleaved practice.

2. Students lack an understanding of the effectiveness of various learning strategies

Next up, students rated how helpful they believed each learning strategy was on a scale from 1 (not at all helpful) to 5 (extremely helpful). Surprisingly, students gave similar ratings to most strategies, ranging from 3.2 to 3.5, except for interleaving, which scored lower at 2.4. This suggests that many students may not fully understand the benefits of the proven strategies compared to more passive study methods.

To explore students’ understanding of specific strategies, researchers asked them to explain why they thought proven methods like Retrieval Practice and Spacing were useful for exam preparation. Here, more than half of the students said Retrieval Practice helped them assess their learning. This means that students saw it as a way to check what they knew, rather than as an effective method for strengthening memory.

When it came to spaced practice, most students (58.5%) recognised that spreading out study sessions could help them learn and remember information better. However, despite understanding its benefits, spaced practice was only the fifth most commonly used strategy. The researchers argue this may be due to a lack of awareness about the “spacing effect” – the idea that spreading out study sessions is significantly more effective than passive techniques like rereading or highlighting.

3. Students study more when there is an upcoming test

When asked about their study habits, 78.3% of students said they usually studied for less than three hours a week. However, when an exam was approaching, their approach flipped: 61.5% of students reported studying more than three hours a week.

This shows that many students follow an irregular study pattern, mainly increasing their study time only when a test is near. It also supports the previous point, that most students do not consistently use spaced practice (despite often recognising its benefit.)