Students observing high-diversity vicarious failure (VF-high) significantly outperform students in VF-low and DI conditions on conceptual knowledge¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3 · i2 medium
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i2 VF-high students significantly outperformed VF-low (d = 0.644) and DI (d = 0.648) students on the conceptual knowledge posttest. → Thomas C. Braas 2025

Evidence¶

Thomas C. Braas 2025¶

Thomas C. Braas, Christian Hartmann, Vincent Hoogerheide, Nikol Rummel, Tamara van Gog. (2025). When is observing failure productive? Investigating the role of solution diversity in vicarious failure. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-025-09706-x

q3 · i2 · causal · r2

Randomized experiment with 152 secondary students in four conditions (PF, VF-high, VF-low, DI); ANCOVA on conceptual knowledge showed a significant condition effect, F(3, 140) = 3.078, p =.030, η2p = 0.062, with "students in the VF-high condition significantly outperformed" VF-low and DI in Bonferroni-corrected post-hoc tests.

"students in the VF-high condition significantly outperformed their counterparts in the VF-low conditions ( p =.014, 95% CI [0.11, 1.18], Cohen’s d = 0.644) and DI (p =.010, 95% CI [0.19, 1.26], Cohen’s d = 0.648) on conceptual knowledge acquisition."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• No significant differences among PF, VF-high, VF-low, and DI conditions on procedural knowledge acquisition — related
• Vicarious failure with high solution diversity is as effective as engaging in Productive Failure oneself for conceptual knowledge acquisition — related
• Diversity of student-generated representations and solution methods is significantly correlated with learning from PF — related
• PF students outperformed direct-instruction students on conceptual understanding and transfer without compromising procedural fluency — related
• Students who generated their own solutions or observed the full process did not significantly outperform students who only viewed the outcomes of failed solution attempts on conceptual knowledge — related
• Observing the complete problem-solving-and-failing process (VF-process) was more effective for conceptual knowledge acquisition than generating one's own failed solutions (PF) prior to instruction — related
• Prior knowledge moderated the VF-process advantage over PF: the benefit of observing the process grew with prior knowledge, while prior knowledge did not affect post-test performance in the PF condition — 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 — related