Written by Tom Furber, an A-Level Economics tutor. Published 17th September 2026.
As an A Level Economics tutor with an interest in research, I care about using evidence so that students can benefit more from the tuition.
Here are five ways I embed the academic evidence into my A-Level Economics and undergraduate economics tuition sessions:
1. The power of practice
Getting students to engage in active practice, from drawing diagrams to attempting full practice papers, is a key part of my economics tuition.
Students who do practice tests perform better on average than those who do not. (Source: Adesope, Trevisan and Sundarajan (2017), linked here).
2. Elaboration
The importance of elaboration includes:
- Switching between general overviews and step-by-step explanations of long chains of reasoning, focussing on each step one at a time. In economics, this can be applied for the analysis of market structures to the effects of tariffs.
- Linking to students prior understanding. This includes prior understanding of economics, but also students’ own interests outside of economics.
- How and why questions to get students explaining each step in the chains of reasoning in 25 mark questions.
3. Spaced repetition
Sessions provide spaced repetition of course content.
First we review course content covered in class (or even content to be covered in class in the future), leading to the first repetition between school and tutoring sessions.
Then I set an homework task for short-term repetition of what we covered in the sessions.
Some time later, we can do further revision and repetition of concepts when revising for school tests and ahead of the final exams.
4. Retrieval practice
Students should be practising retrieval, namely the act of recalling information from somewhere in their brain. This is so that when you get to exams, you can remember the course content and retrieve it at the right opportunity.
During my sessions, we undertake retrieval practice in several ways.
This can range from low-stakes quiz questions during the session to asking students to write an essay from scratch. Ahead of school mocks or full exams, we can also set timed, no-notes practice tests.
5. Dual coding
Dual coding means that multiple ways of showing the same idea side by side can help to improve learning outcomes. Here I make use of the online whiteboard for drawing diagrams alongside explanations. We can also do this for planning essays, with analysis or evaluation along a diagram or mini flow chart.
You can also find examples of this on my micro and macro diagram pages.
6. Techniques derived from cognitive load theory
Cognitive load theory.
Here are a few examples of how I apply cognitive load theory in my economics tutoring:
- Use of partially completed problems. For example, can you complete an evaluation point; or given the analysis, can you evaluate?
- Open-ended analysis without a goal state. For example, explain how QE works rather than explaining how QE affects the inflation rate.
Relevant paper: Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design: 20 Years Later (Sweller et al. 2019).
The benefits of integrating research into my A-Level Economics tutoring
Reading the research is not enough. It’s important to implement it and apply it to economics.
Based on my experience, integrating research-based methods into my tutoring can help improve students’ economics grades.
In particular, students have reported finding my practice tests particularly helpful. This could help explain my students’ average improvement of two grades during the tuition.
If you would like to benefit from my research-led A-Level Economics tutoring, please check out my A-Level Economics tutoring →.
More information about my A-Level Economics tutoring
How my economics tuition can lead to grade improvement →
Pricing, availability and what my tutoring includes →
Undergraduate economics tuition →
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