Productive failure students significantly outperformed lecture-practice and facilitated complex problem solving students on well-structured and higher-order application post-test problems¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r? · q3
Currency · newest study 2011 · checked against its sources 2026-10-17 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Despite seemingly failing in their collective and individual problem-solving efforts, productive failure students significantly outperformed students in both the lecture-practice and facilitated complex problem solving conditions on well-structured and higher-order application problems on the post-test. → Kapur 2011

Evidence¶

Kapur 2011¶

Kapur, M. (2011). A further study of productive failure in mathematical problem solving: unpacking the design components. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-010-9144-3

q3 · i? · causal · r?

A quasi-experimental classroom study in which 109 seventh-grade mathematics students taught by the same teacher in a Singapore school were assigned to one of three learning designs. The article reports that PF students "significantly outperformed their counterparts in the other two conditions" on both problem types on the post-test; no effect size is printed in the available text.

"Despite seemingly failing in their collective and individual problem-solving efforts, PF students significantly outperformed their counterparts in the other two conditions on both the well-structured and higher-order application problems on the post-test"

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Problem Solving — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• Differences between the facilitated complex problem solving and lecture-practice conditions did not reach significance on post-test outcomes — related
• Productive failure students demonstrated greater representation flexibility in working with graphical representations than students in the other two conditions — related
• Productive Failure Improves Conceptual Learning — a broader claim this one bears on
• Collaborative situations often fail to be productive in practice, so orchestrating collaboration is not simple — related
• Guidance during initial problem solving does not translate into better learning from subsequent instruction — related
• PF students did not outperform DI students when learning social science research methods in two quasi-experimental studies with 10th graders, failing to replicate the STEM-domain PF effect — reports the opposite
• Providing both a simple and a complex example facilitates transfer better than a single example or an example plus procedures — related
• Collaborative group failure on ill-structured physics problems confers later individual problem-solving advantages over success on well-structured problems (productive failure) — related
• Well-structured collaborative learning is extremely effective, especially for learning concepts and complex problem solving — related
• Collaborative and individual problem solving in traditional PF do not differ in conceptual knowledge after instruction — reports the opposite