Levels of Strategies and Strategic Processing

• In Event: Investigating Strategies and Strategy Use: Where Do We Go From Here?

Abstract

Strategies and strategic processing are generally considered to be dynamic and multidimensional (Dinsmore, 2017). The manner in which researchers have conceptualized and operationalized strategies has resulted in distinctions that may influence an individual’s subsequent performance on a task or problem. The crux of this presentation will be to consider different levels of strategic processing and how this processing influences individuals’ performance in a task or while solving a problem.
This presentation shares findings of a review of existing systematic and non-systematic reviews on strategy use. To guide this review of reviews, we pose the following questions:
1. How have levels of processing been conceptualized and operationalized in literature reviews of strategic processing?
2. Have these levels of processing been shown to influence performance in any systematic manner across these reviews?
3. What other individual and contextual factors have these reviews concluded to be important factors to consider in the relation between levels of processing and performance?
Method
To select relevant reviews we searched PsycINFO and Google Scholar using the terms “strategic processing review” and “cognitive strategy review,” with a final pool of 15 total reviews. To gather evidence from these reviews, we created a table that recorded the inclusion and conceptualization of levels of processing, whether and how measurement of levels of processing was addressed, the context in which levels of processing was examined, which learner individual differences were examined, and what conclusions the review drew regarding the link between levels of strategic processing and performance outcomes. The table is primarily descriptive – rather than a reductive coding process – to provide readers with as much information as possible.
Findings
We found that ten of the reviews explicitly discussed levels of processing and six of the tabled reviews specifically examined the measurement of levels of strategic processing. Additionally, we found that the reviews provided inconsistent evidence regarding the ways in which strategic processing influences performance.
Eleven of the reviews in the pool specifically discussed individual factors that might influence the relation between level of processing and performance. Further, the reviews included both domain-specific and domain-general contexts. Overall, there seems to be consensus that while there are some strategies that can be considered domain general, there is certainly quite a bit of evidence to suggest that being conscious of domain when examining strategic processing is important.
Concluding Thoughts
We believe this is an exciting time to be engaged in research dealing with levels of strategy use. The reviews contained in this chapter point to many promising avenues of research that can enable us to better understand how these levels of processing are influenced by individual and contextual differences, how those differences might mediate and moderate the relation between levels of processing and performance, and finally, how those levels of processing might directly relate to performance. We hope this review is helpful to those already engaged in the field, but particularly to those new to this area of research.

Authors

• Daniel Dinsmore, University of North Florida

• Courtney Hattan, Illinois State University