The effects of Self-Explanation on science text comprehension for Sixth grade students with different levels of prior knowledge

• Main Authors: Huang, Yu-ping, 黃玉萍
• Other Authors: Tzeng, Yuhtsuen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/41362650788173755577

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 教育學研究所 === 101 === The purposes of this study were to examine the influence of self-explanation (SE) on the outcomes and the processes of science learning for sixth grade students with different levels of prior knowledge and relevant misconception. Thirty-six students became eligible participants according to their performance on pre-tests of prior knowledge and a misconception subtest for States and State Changes. The experimental design was a 2 (SE v.s. control group) X 2 (high v.s. low prior knowledge) X 2 (high v.s. low misconception) factorial design with two incomplete cells because there were no students qualified as low prior knowledge and low misconception in both the SE and control groups. The rest of 6 cells contained 6 participants each and this resulted into 18 participants for the SE and the control group respectively. The SE group read and self-explained a text describing state changes of water while the control group read it twice. All participants received post-tests using the same instrument. All the analysis used pre-test scores as covariates. The main results were as follows: SE students did not perform better than the control group. Students with different levels of prior knowledge did not benefit from self-explaining. High misconception students did not benefit from self-explaining, neither. In contrast, lowmisconception students benefit from SE when they answered comprehension questions and memory/definition questions. SE influenced amounts and types of verbal protocol students generated. Students with different levels of prior knowledgediffered in “principle-based explanation and anticipative reasoning”. Students with different levels of misconception differed in “principle-based explanation and anticipative reasoning”, “thoughtful questions” and “monitoring statements”. All the results indicated that the influence of SE heavily modulated by learners’ misconception and less so by prior knowledge.