New research from Vanderbilt鈥檚听听of education and human development looks at the constraints of the popular practice of prompting students to provide self-explanation as a learning tool.
The paper, 鈥淓liciting Explanations: Constraints on When Self-Explanation Aids Learning,鈥� authored by听, professor of psychology and human development, and graduate student Abbey M. Loehr, was published by听
鈥淕enerating self-explanations in an attempt to make sense of new information is often a powerful learning technique,鈥� Rittle-Johnson said. 鈥淗owever, we found that explaining one鈥檚 own solution methods or choices may reduce learning under certain conditions. Explanation prompts must be carefully designed to align with target learning outcomes.鈥�
One constraint to self-explanation, the researchers found, is that in certain situations it reinforced the student鈥檚 pre-existing theories, which were often incorrect. That detour may have reduced attention to new information and evidence that contradicted their theories.