An Interaction Between Children's Field Dependence-Independence and Order of Learning With Glass Box and Black Box Simulations

• In Event: Games, Simulations, and Gamified Environments

Abstract

The present study was undertaken in order to investigate issues related to the integration of instructional simulations in the education of young children aged from 5 to 6.5 years old. A counterbalanced measures design was adopted to investigate the extent to which there was an interaction effect between field dependence-independence (FD-I) and order of learning with a glass-box simulation and a black-box simulation. According to the results, there was a statistically significant interaction between FD-I and the order of using the glass-box and the black-box simulations. Specifically, the findings showed that learning first with the black-box simulation facilitated field-dependent children’s subsequent learning with the glass-box simulation enabling them to perform as good as field-independent children.

Authors

• Charoula M. Angeli, University of Cyprus

• Nicolaos C. Valanides, Frederick University

• Eirini Polemitou

• Elena Fraggoulidou