5.2. Making the most of self-explanations
What I used to think
Seeing as I had never really considered the power of self-explanations as a learning tool, it is of little surprise that I did not consider ways to make self-explanations as effective as possible. As it happens, I was missing out, big time.
Sources of inspiration
My takeaway
Just like we observed in Chapter 4 when looking at the presentation of information, it turns out that with a few relatively straightforward tweaks we can make the Self-Explanation Effect even more powerful.
1. Explaining someone else’s answer
Because I used to believe that the main benefit of self-explanations was for me to get a sense of my students’ understanding, I thought that it was better for students to explain their own answers. After all, who better than the students themselves to explain their own thinking, and thus give me an insight into their thought processes? Therefore, I would let students explain their own answers far more than I challenged them to explain others.
However, Siegler (2002) found that children who were randomly assigned to explain the experimenter’s reasoning learned more than children who explained their own reasoning. Studies conducted in other laboratories have shown that the people whose reasoning is being explained need not be present for the positive effects to emerge. Encouraging children and adults to explain the reasoning that they encounter in textbooks has similar benefits.
Hence, now I devise answers and examples that I have created and challenge my students to explain them – firstly to themselves during a moment of silent contemplation, and only then as part of a wider discussion. This has the added advantage of allowing me to carefully construct and present examples exactly how I need in order to draw out their key features and highlight common misconceptions. Sometimes I challenge students to explain each other’s answers and methods, but I tend to anonymise the work to avoid any unnecessary anxiety and distractions.
2. Explaining if something is wrong or right
I was a little wary about using incorrect examples in case an incorrect procedure was reinforced.
However, one of Siegler’s (2002) key findings is that ‘explaining why correct answers are correct and why incorrect answers are incorrect yields greater learning than only explaining why correct answers are correct’.
So now I encourage my students to explain why things are both right and wrong, using examples I have carefully prepared. However, I tend to leave this discussion until students have practised the correct method so they have a sense of what is right and what is wrong, and I always make it crystal clear what the correct answer is at the end of this process lest it lead to confusion.
Further discussion and considerations about the use of incorrect examples and practical techniques for their use can be found in Chapters 6, 7 and 11.
3. Explaining to someone else
I used to think it was a good idea to get students to explain their reasoning to someone else. After all, surely both parties benefited – the student on the receiving end of the explanation essentially had a personal tutor helping them understanding a concept, and the person giving the explanation was compelled to explain, discuss and argue their way of thinking, thus strengthening their own understanding. Hence, I would challenge students to ‘convince someone else you are right’ on a regular basis.
Chi (2000) makes the point that the focus when self-explaining is simply to understand or make sense of something, whereas the purpose of talking or explaining to others is to convey information to them. Talking or explaining to others adds the requirement to the explainer of monitoring the listener’s comprehension, essentially assessing their levels of understanding and adjusting and adapting where needed. It seems reasonable to assume that cognitive capacity is consumed through talking, noticing and responding, especially in a novice learner who has just encountered a concept, which may prevent that student from engaging in critical self-explaining behaviours and thus benefiting from the process. In such a scenario, the explanation given is likely to be muddled and unclear, so neither party may benefit.
These days I am much more selective in my use of ‘convince me’. I like the process of ‘convince yourself, convince a friend, convince a sceptic’, but only if I am sure students have actually convinced themselves. A well-designed diagnostic multiple-choice question (Chapter 11) might be one way to quickly assess this, followed by asking students not just to indicate who got it right, but also who feels confident explaining to others.
The same cognitive strain is likely to be experienced when asking students to explain their answer to me. Hence, in order to increase the chance of students having engaged in a process of personal, silent self-explanation, I force myself to pause after asking a question, calling for a brief period of silence, before eliciting any responses.
4. Self-explanations v more practice
We have seen the benefits of student self-explanation throughout this chapter, but there is no doubt that it takes longer to explain and answer a question than just to answer it. When you combine this observation with the clear benefits of regular practice, it raises the obvious question: is self-explanation worth the time, or should we just get our students to practise more instead?
McEldoon et al (2013) attempt to provide an answer. The authors compared the effectiveness of self-explanation prompts to the effectiveness of solving additional practice problems in primary school maths students. Students were placed into three groups: the self-explain group solved six problems and were prompted to self-explain after each; the control group also solved six problems but were not prompted to self-explain; and the additional practice group solved 12 problems and were also not prompted to self-explain.
The authors found that relative to the control condition, the self-explain condition supported greater conceptual understanding, particularly of equation structures, and greater procedural fluency, particularly for procedural transfer. However, relative to additional practice, the self-explain condition had modest benefits. The findings suggest that self-explanation prompts have some small unique learning benefits, but that greater attention needs to be paid to how much self-explanation offers advantages over alternative uses of time.
The obvious conclusion is that a balance is needed, but it is worth bearing in mind that self-explanation does not need to be overly time-consuming. It is the act of pausing and reflecting on an answer or part of a procedure – often for no more than a few seconds. It does not necessarily need articulating or discussing – and in fact we have seen that doing so may indeed impose a significant load upon working memory. Hence, if we can encourage our students to pause briefly to reflect, then they may enjoy the many benefits of self-explaining while still having plenty of time for additional practice. In Section 7.8 we will see how Intelligent Practice is designed precisely for this, and in Section 8.4 why it is vital students have answers to classwork for the same reason.
5. Spontaneous Self-Explainers
Renkl (1997) finds that the majority of learners do not spontaneously engage in successful self-explanation strategies. He explains:
The finding that more than half of the subjects had to be assigned to the group of unsuccessful learners, reaffirms research findings that learners, left to their own devices, typically fail to show effective learning behaviors when no external support (eg, teacher guidance or scaffolding) is present.
A key factor may be prior knowledge, with a study by Chi et al (1989) concluding that high-ability students tend to spontaneously self-explain more often than low-ability students.
This is crucial, as there is a danger in assuming that any spare working memory capacity will be used up for things that contribute towards learning – ie germane load. If this is not the case, and students do not naturally engage in self-explanations, then their learning will not be as effective as it could be.
This has significant implications for the classroom, and suggests that we should prompt students to provide self-explanations during instruction. This important finding will play a key role in the Supercharged Worked Examples that follow in the next chapter, and is also the rationale for the Counter of Hope…
6. The Counter of Hope
If I set my students off on a challenging activity, I like to give them each a counter – the Counter of Hope. This counter can be exchanged at any time during the activity for a hint from me. If students are working in a group, then it tends to be one Counter of Hope per group. I make it crystal clear to students that once they have used up this counter, then there is no help from me at all. This simple act has quite a profound effect on students – it causes them to think really carefully about the help they seek. In the past, when many of my students have encountered a problem, their immediate response was to either give up or to ask me for help. The fact that they know help is available via the Counter of Hope alleviates the issue of giving up, but because they now know they can only access such help once during the activity, they are far more likely to pause and reflect when they are stuck. In other words, they are more likely to self-explain. The effect is even stronger when working in groups. Here, I have seen one student put up their hand to ask for help, and another member of the group virtually climb across the desk to yank her teammate’s hand back down, uttering ‘ask me first, ask me first, we don’t want to waste our counter’. Anything that compels students to persevere, think hard and work together positively is good with me, and I am perpetually surprised how much influence a small circular piece of plastic has over Year 7s and Year 13s alike.
What I do now
In order to take full advantage of the Self-Explanation Effect, I: