Training in Self-Explanation and Self-Regulation Strategies: Investigating the Effects of Knowledge Acquisition Activities on Problem Solving

Abstract Previous research has found positive correlations between particular strategies students use while studying to explain instructional materials to themselves and student performance on associated problem-solving tasks (Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, Pirolli Pirolli & Recker, 1994). In the study reported here, we investigate the causal nature of this relation. This was accomplished by identifying a set of self-explanation and self-regulation strategies used by high-performance students in our earlier studies. We used strategy training to manipulate students' application of these strategies and examined the impact of their use on student explanations and performance. Twenty-four university students with no prior programming experience worked through a sequence of programming lessons. Following introductory lessons, participants received interventions involving explicit training in the strategies (instructional group) or received a similar set of interventions but no explicit training (control group). The instructional group showed significantly greater gains than the control group in the use of self-explanation and self-regulation strategies from the pre- to postinterventions lessons. Increased strategy application was accompanied by significantly greater performance gains. The results indicate that the particular self-explanation and self-regulation strategies used in training contribute to learning and problem-solving performance.