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Confidence Ratings

The strategy, as published

Exactly as it appears on the card

Confidence Ratings

Dunlosky and Metcalfe showed students are most confident about things most recently read, not things they actually know. Rate confidence after each attempt, then reveal the answer. That gap is the target.

Suggested technology quiz tool with confidence rating · Informed by Dunlosky & Metcalfe

Find this under Check understanding

Part of Metacognition & Calibration in 01 Retrieval Practice, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.

Why you might use it

The problem it may help with

Students are most confident about the things they read most recently, not the things they actually know. That is Dunlosky and Metcalfe's finding, and it explains a great deal of misdirected revision: recency masquerades as mastery, and decisions get made on the feeling.

Rating confidence after each retrieval attempt, then revealing the answer, turns that private feeling into something that can be checked. The gap between the rating and the result is the target.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

In a self-quizzing routine, pupils answer each question, write 1 to 5 for how sure they are, then check. One pupil finds her 5s are mostly right, but so are her 2s: she knows more than she feels she does, and her revision list changes accordingly.

Try it

A way to begin

Add a one-number confidence column to any answer-then-check activity the class already does. The overhead is seconds per question.

What to notice

Reading what happens

  • Systematic patterns: pupils always certain, pupils never certain. Both are calibration problems, and they need different conversations.
  • Whether the ratings change what pupils choose to revise. The number is only worth collecting if it changes a decision.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

  • Rate after the attempt, not before it. The card is specific, because the attempt itself is evidence the rating should draw on.

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Dunlosky and Metcalfe's work on metacognitive monitoring is the direct source: judgements of learning track recency and fluency more faithfully than they track actual knowledge. The card’s attribution stands as published: Dunlosky & Metcalfe.

The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Retrieval Practice.

Keep exploring

Where next?

Back to this strategy in 01 Retrieval Practice, across to what you're trying to improve, or into all 144 at once.

Want to take this further?

Support is available

Pedagogy First gives you a starting point. If you want support exploring how approaches like this can work across your school, trust or professional learning programme, that work is available.

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