A COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF WORKED EXAMPLES AND PRODUCTIVE FAILURE IN LEARNING PROCEDURAL AND CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE RELATED TO STATISTICS
Open Access
- Author:
- Cook, Michael Alan
- Graduate Program:
- Educational Psychology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 03, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Peggy Noel Van Meter, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Peggy Noel Van Meter, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Rayne Audrey Sperling, Committee Member
Jonna Marie Kulikowich, Committee Member
Roy Clariana, Outside Member - Keywords:
- statistics instruction
worked examples
productive failure
procedural knowledge
conceptual knowledge
cognitive load - Abstract:
- In statistics instruction, strategies that promote initial student success in instruction, such as worked examples, are frequently used. There is evidence that difficulties at the beginning of the instructional process can significantly hinder student learning, so instruction should be designed to minimize the chances of students failing (i.e., Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006). However, other instructional paradigms, such as productive failure, have shown evidence supporting the idea that initial difficulty may actually be helpful in the learning process. Furthermore, the use of productive failure in statistics instruction has shown evidence of greater gains for students on conceptual knowledge measures, with no loss of performance on procedural knowledge measures. However, both worked examples and productive failure have usually been compared to direct instruction or some other variation of a control condition of instruction. There is little available research that has directly compared these strategies, either in statistics instruction or other content areas. This study examines the interaction between instruction type (worked examples and productive failure) and knowledge learners acquire (procedural and conceptual knowledge) in the instruction of basic statistics. This interaction is examined at both immediate and delayed posttests. Repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted to address these research questions. This study contributes to the literature by examining whether an instruction by knowledge interaction occurs in statistics instruction on both immediate and delayed posttests, which has not been investigated in previous research.