In Experiment 1, I-PS students solved the initial problem better but PS-I students learned more from the subsequent instructional video¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2025 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 2 of 2 entries) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? I-PS students significantly outperformed PS-I students during the problem-solving phase and generated more ideas. → Cheng-Wen He 2025 q3 i? PS-I students scored significantly higher than I-PS students on the embedded quizzes during the instruction phase. → Cheng-Wen He 2025 (2)

Evidence¶

Cheng-Wen He 2025¶

Cheng-Wen He, Logan Fiorella, Paula P. Lemons. (2025). Does Instruction-First or Problem-Solving-First Depend on Learners' Prior Knowledge? Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-09993-3

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Quade ANCOVA of coded problem-solving performance in Experiment 1, controlling for prior knowledge. As expected, "significantly outperformed the PS-I students" during problem-solving; the I-PS group also generated significantly more ideas (F(1,365) = 11.53, p = .001).

"the I-PS students ( M=2 .72,SD = 3.37 ) significantly outperformed the PS-I students ( M=0 .93,SD = 1.58 ) during the problem-solving phase, F(1,365) = 44.54 , p < .001"

Cheng-Wen He 2025 (2)¶

Cheng-Wen He, Logan Fiorella, Paula P. Lemons. (2025). Does Instruction-First or Problem-Solving-First Depend on Learners' Prior Knowledge? Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-09993-3

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Quade ANCOVA of embedded video-quiz scores in Experiment 1, controlling for prior knowledge: F(1,365) = 6.69, p = .010. The authors interpret that "experiencing the problem-solving phase first enhanced learning from the instructional video".

"the PS-I group ( M=5 .38,SD = 0.91 ) scored significantly higher on the quizzes than the I-PS group ( M=5 .10,SD = 1.04 )"

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Problem Solving — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• In Experiment 2, I-PS students outperformed PS-I students on problem-solving, idea generation, and embedded video quizzes — related
• Practice-problem performance favored PS-I overall, but the advantage was concentrated on the first two worksheets (d = 0.52) — related
• Initial failure did not hurt subsequent learning during instruction: no condition differences on example generation or immediate learning tests — reports the opposite
• For biochemistry students with relatively higher topic-specific prior knowledge, instruction-first (I-PS) outperformed problem-solving-first (PS-I) on a near-transfer test — related
• For introductory biology students with low topic-specific prior knowledge, problem-solving-first (PS-I) outperformed instruction-first (I-PS) on a near-transfer test — related
• Merely delaying instruction until after problem solving does not improve conceptual understanding when no additional measures trigger knowledge-gap awareness or deep-feature discovery — related
• Receiving instruction before problem solving improves procedural fluency more than problem solving before instruction when both phases are otherwise identical — related
• PS-I with a virus transmission simulation showed better transfer of multivariable causality to a new context, despite similar end-of-intervention performance to I-PS — related
• In PS-I, prompting students to generate multiple strategies during the initial phase generally outperformed inventing one strategy or I-PS — related