The separation of self‐ and instructional explanations in musical knowledge learning

BACKGROUND: Though self-explanation and instructional explanation are common learning methods, there is a lack of research directly comparing their effects within the same experimental framework or their influence in the specific context of music education. Cognitive load theory (CLT) has been widely validated in core academic subject learning, yet its application to music education remains scarce, and the moderating role of its core construct-element interactivity-in explanation-based music learning is unexamined. AIMS: This study takes CLT as the theoretical framework to examine the roles of self-explanation and instructional explanation in musical knowledge learning and to explore how element interactivity (the core indicator of intrinsic cognitive load) moderates the effectiveness of the two methods in musical knowledge learning. SAMPLES: Two respective experiments are conducted for groups of 183 and 169 fourth-grade primary school students ('Experiment 1' and 'Experiment 2'). METHODS: Two experiments were conducted on element interactivity, which was manipulated by two core types of musical knowledge: intervals (low-element interactivity) and chords (high-element interactivity). In each experiment, participants were randomly divided into self-explanation, instructional explanation, worked sample only or problem-solving groups to explore their musical knowledge learning processes. RESULTS: In Experiment 1, self-explanation and instructional explanation groups performed significantly better for interval knowledge with low-element interactivity relative to worked sample only and problem-solving groups. Participants in the self-explanation group consistently outperformed their peers. Similarly, participants in self-explanation and instructional explanation groups outperformed others in Experiment 2; when learning chordal knowledge with high-element interactivity, participants in the instructional explanation group performed better than those in the self-explanation group. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that self-explanation and instructional explanation methods facilitate musical knowledge learning, and that their effects differ based on the element interactivity of the material being taught. Self-explanation is more suitable for learning knowledge with low-element interactivity, while instructional explanation is more suitable for high-element interactivity learning.