Journal
JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES
Volume 30, Issue 2, Pages 163-203Publisher
ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/10508406.2021.1888733
Keywords
-
Funding
- National Science Foundation [1611782]
- Division Of Undergraduate Education
- Direct For Education and Human Resources [1611782] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Adaptive support for representational competencies can significantly reduce confusion and mistakes during problem solving while enhancing learning of content knowledge. This study highlights the importance of personalized support in STEM education.
Background: A key aspect of STEM learning is the use of visual representations for problem solving. To successfully use visuals, students need to make sense of how they show concepts and to fluently perceive domain-relevan information in them. Adding support for sense making and perceptual fluency to problem-solving activities enhances students' learning of content knowledge. However, students need different types of representational-competency supports, depending on their prior knowledge. This suggests that adaptively assigning students to sense-makingand perceptual-fluency support might be more effective than assigning all students to the same sequence of these supports. Method: We tested this hypothesis in an experiment with 44 undergraduate students in a chemistry course. Students were randomly assigned to a ten-week sequence of problem-solving activities that either provided a fixed sequence of sense-making support and perceptual-fluency support or adaptively assigned these supports based on students' problem-solving interactions. Findings: Results show that adaptive representational-competency supports reduced students' confusion and mistakes during problem solving while increasing their learning of content knowledge. Contribution: Our study is the first to show that adaptive support for representational competencies can significantly enhance learning of content knowledge. Given the pervasiveness of visuals, our results may inform general STEM instruction.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available