Do children learn more from self-explanation than extra practice?

Explaining a rule or concept to yourself forces you to think deeply about it. Plenty of studies have shown this has benefits, both in terms of improving the understanding of relevant concepts and aiding the skill or process in question. Unfortunately, as Katherine McEldoon and her colleagues argue in their new paper, most of these studies are flawed because they failed to control for the extra time spent on self-explanation. So a typical study has compared, say, 30 minutes practice against 30 minutes practice plus time spent on self-explanation. This means any apparent benefit of self-explanation could just be due to extra time spent on studying.McEldoon's team attempted to avoid this shortcoming. Sixty-nine children, average age 8.8 years, were split into three groups. All had previously struggled with the focus of the study - mathematical equivalence. One baseline group received 50 minutes instruction and practice on solving mathematical equivalence problems (e.g. 6 + 3 + 4 = 6 + _). Another group received the 50 minutes instruction and practice, but they were also prompted to explain why answers to the questions were right or wrong. A final "additional practice" group acted as controls - they received the 50 minutes instruction and practice, and they spent extra time on solving more equations to control for the time taken by the second group on self-explanation. Right after this, and again two weeks later, all the children completed a test of their conceptua...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs