Teach learners to initiate and perform learning activities aimed at conceptual change themselves¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 3 claims (3 for) · 1 study (1 causal), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 3 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article closes by proposing that future work should identify "the instructional conditions required to teach students how they themselves can initiate and perform learning activities aimed at conceptual change". This moves beyond externally prompted activation toward self-regulated conceptual-change activity. It remains a research recommendation, not an implemented or tested recipe, since the article's experiments supplied activation computer-assisted rather than teaching students to self-initiate it.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Research must first identify the instructional conditions that enable students to initiate and perform conceptual-change learning activities themselves

Constraints¶

• The article states this as needing additional research; it was not tested in the reported study

Target Learners¶

• Primary education students (fifth- and sixth-graders in the reported studies)

Target Learning Goals¶

• Self-initiated learning activities aimed at conceptual change

Claims¶

• The revised CONTACT-2 strategy led fifth- and sixth-graders to construct better conceptions and achieve higher learning performance scores than original CONTACT or no-activation control conditions [+W]
• CONTACT-2's effectiveness did not depend on the degree of conceptual resemblance between test questions and the central concepts from the texts, nor on the moment of testing [+W]
• In an earlier study, students taught with the original CONTACT strategy focused mainly on the central concepts from the training texts, disregarding other information [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Biemans, H.J.A., Simons, P.RJ. (1996). Contact-2: a computer-assisted instructional strategy for promoting conceptual change. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00120487