The generation of explanations is central to scientific and technological development. In the process of figuring out explanations, the generation of inferences relies on the application of skills associated with scientific behaviors (e.g. analytical reasoning and critical thinking). The process of explanation generation causes a deeper analysis and revision of the scientific models, thus impacting the conceptual understanding of such models. Although the process of generating authentic explanations is closer to the experience of doing science, this process is seldom replicated in science instruction. One strategy with sound empirical evidence is prompting students into self-explaining. Self-explaining refers to learner's generation of inferences about causality. In science, self-explaining can be conceptualized as making sense of how and why phenomena take place. Research studies on self-explaining show that it improves learning and enhances authentic learning in the sciences. Also, research findings suggest that self-explaining influences many aspects of cognition, including acquisition of problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding. Although, there is clear evidence for the link between self-explaining and learning in controlled experimental settings, its implementation in the context of real college science learning environments is still an under-researched area. The purpose of the study was to advance knowledge in this area by investigating the effect different self-explaining tasks have on conceptual understanding of chemistry concepts. This study uses a multi-condition mixed-method approach to categorize students' self-explaining behavior and link it to the performance in a post-learning task. The conditions used in this study include: explaining correct and incorrect answers, explaining agreement with others' answer, and explaining one's own answer for others to use. These conditions were observed in the classroom ecology of large enrollment general chemistry course. Preliminary results suggest that in this context, self-explaining behavior is associated with improved understanding of the concepts at hand.

Conceptual understanding and self-explaining in General Chemistry

247th National Meeting (2014)

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