Self-Explaining to Improve Monitoring and Self-Regulation When Learning to Solve Problem-Solving Tasks

• In Event: 29.028 - Novel Methods for Assessing and Enhancing Metacognitive Monitoring

Abstract

Being able to monitor one's own learning is a prerequisite skill for successful self-regulated learning. Monitoring has been found to be difficult for adolescents, especially in learning problem-solving tasks. This study investigated whether self-explaining, which has been found effective for improving monitoring accuracy when learning from expository text, can improve monitoring, regulation and performance when solving genetics problems. In two experiments it was shown that monitoring accuracy was less accurate for complex problems and no differences between the self-explanation and the control conditions were found. Interestingly, the quality of self-explanations was related to monitoring and performance.

Authors

• Martine Baars, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Claudia Leopold, University of Fribourg

• Fred Paas, Erasmus University