Students who self-explain worked examples learn more effectively than those who do not, and the quality of self-explanations relates to explaining deep structure¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2000 · checked against its sources 2026-10-16 (automated, 2 of 2 entries) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Physics-naive college students who generated self-explanations while studying examples showed greater success at subsequent problem solving than students who did not. → Atkinson 2000 q2 i? The quality of effective learners' self-explanations is attributable to how often they attempt to self-explain the deep structure of problems. → Atkinson 2000 (2)

Evidence¶

Atkinson 2000¶

Atkinson, R. K., Derry, S. J., Renkl, A., & Wortham, D. (2000). Learning from Examples: Instructional Principles from the Worked Examples Research. Review of Educational Research, 70(2), 181-214. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543070002181

q2 · i? · review · r3

The review reports, citing Chi and colleagues, a protocol study of physics-naive college students studying an elementary physics lesson; students 'who self-explained while studying examples appeared to learn more effectively' than those who did not.

"They found that the students in their study who self-explained while studying examples appeared to learn more effectively (as demonstrated by their greater success at subsequent problem solving) than those who did not exhibit this behavior."

Atkinson 2000 (2)¶

Atkinson, R. K., Derry, S. J., Renkl, A., & Wortham, D. (2000). Learning from Examples: Instructional Principles from the Worked Examples Research. Review of Educational Research, 70(2), 181-214. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543070002181

q2 · i? · review · r3

The review reports, citing Renkl, a study of qualitative differences in college students' self-explanations; 'the quality of the effective learners' self-explanations could be attributed to how often they attempted to self-explain the deep structure'.

"Renkl (1997b) discovered that the quality of the effective learners' self-explanations could be attributed to how often they attempted to self-explain the deep structure of the problems."

Studies bearing on this claim¶

What should learners do while studying an example, and which examples should they see? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 6 narrower claims that bear on it: 10 distinct studies (4 causal, 3 quant-synthesis, 2 review, 1 associational), q2–q4, 2 of 10 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Prompting learners to self-explain improves understanding and problem solving on immediate tests by a moderate average amount, with little evidence yet on delayed or classroom gains. — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Prompting learners to self-explain, one generative strategy, improves learning by a moderate average amount; other generative activities are not tested by the evidence recorded here — a broader claim this one bears on
• Students with more controlled interaction patterns in iSTART-2 generated higher-quality self-explanations than students with more random patterns — related
• The assisting self-explanation prompt effect: assisting prompts elicit high-quality self-explanations and deep understanding — related
• Explaining one's own potentially incorrect ideas can reduce learning, while explaining known-correct content supports it — related
• Self-explaining worked examples improve declarative knowledge of CDR strategies more than solving problems — related
• Students using a worked-example revised probability textbook improved more in probabilistic reasoning than students using the standard textbook — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Erroneous examples improve conceptual understanding by forcing comparison with correct models. — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Prompting self-explanation in a physics electricity unit led to accelerated future learning in a subsequent magnetism unit — related
• Structuring worked examples to emphasize subgoals, via labels or visual segmentation, enhances transfer to novel problems — related
• Self-explaining a worked example of a learning journal entry enhances strategy use and transfer of journal-writing benefits to a new topic — related
• Learning from examples depends on the explaining mode: prompting principle-based self-explanations and guided comparison of examples improves transfer — a narrower finding that bears on this claim