Fostering the learning of problem-solving skills: Prompting stepwise retrieval during worked examples.

Abstract

Problem-solving tasks are a common part of many school subjects, but acquiring problem-solving skills can be difficult. This study investigated the effectiveness of repeatedly prompting students to retrieve prior knowledge while studying worked examples. It was studied whether prompting stepwise retrieval during worked example study (retrieval condition) leads to higher performance on scaffolded and isomorphic problem-solving tasks compared to only studying worked examples (control condition). No effects of stepwise retrieval practice, positive or negative, were found on both the scaffolded and isomorphic tasks. This indicates that adding retrieval prompts to worked example study does not improve, nor hamper, the performance on problem-solving tasks, compared to regular worked example study. Moreover, this study was conducted with pre-vocational education students and findings suggest that our understanding of how these students learn may still be incomplete. This study is a first step in the investigation of combining worked examples with (stepwise) retrieval practice. Unexpectedly, it also provides insights for future research into the learning process of pre-vocational education students during worked example study. Multiple directions for future research are identified.