I would take issue with Genghis on this, though I don't have a diploma in education so perhaps you should take what I have to say with a pinch of salt. I've done OK for myself educationally, but perhaps I would have done better had I taken his advice.
My personal strategy is to start off with an exam, then revise the areas where I fell down, then try again. The important caveat on which I think we'd both agree is to spend much more time actually reading and understanding than actually doing the exams.
Exams...
-Set the standard.
Something apparently simple a syllabus may say such as 'Explain the use of aeronautical maps and charts in practical navigation.' probably means a lot to the examiner, but as I already knew that pilots used charts I'm not sure what else (if anything) they actually want me to know. I can think of lots of questions like 'what's the difference between a map and a chart' or 'are electronic charts permissible', which may or may not be what the examiner was getting at. Likewise 'Define ICAO with examples of Articles and Annexes of the Convention.' A bit open ended, in my view.
- Reduce re-learning things that are already well understood. Chances are you know a lot of the material fairly well already. You want to concentrate on the things that you don't know, not what you already do.
- Practice exams help identify areas you think you understand, but don't. It can be quite difficult to do this without some kind of external aid.
- Sometimes give practical practice. I find the idea of learning about weight and balance calculations, then waiting until two weeks before the exam in order to actually do one, very odd indeed. For me the best way of understanding something like this is to simply sit down and work my way through a few problems, which should be included with model answers in mock papers or textbooks.
- There are topics where 'deep learning' isn't really a meaningful concept - you can only go so far trying to think of joined-up ways to remember signal lights and marshalling instructions. I'd use flashcards for these.
It only works when there are a fair number of mock papers to do, which thankfully there are for the PPL exams. You can get some good ones on
AirQuiz - Online Practice Examinations for Pilots!.
My personal view is that the view of how learning should take place that Genghis outlined is driven by cost-cutting. Multiple choice exams are cheap and reliable forms of summarative education, but are very expensive to write. They're also not particularly good forms of formative education - i.e. you don't learn as much from doing them as you do from some other types of examination such as short answer questions or essays which are much more difficult to mark reliably.