When Problem Solving Followed by Instruction Works: Evidence for Productive Failure

When learning a new concept, should students engage in problem solving followed by instruction (PS-I) or instruction followed by problem solving (I-PS)? Noting that there is a passionate debate about the design of initial learning, we report evidence from a meta-analysis of 53 studies with 166 compa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Review of educational research Vol. 91; no. 5; pp. 761 - 798
Main Authors: Sinha, Tanmay, Kapur, Manu
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.10.2021
American Educational Research Association
Subjects:
Educational Research
Effect Size
Elementary School Students
Failure
Fidelity
Foreign Countries
Grade 5
Hedges
Instruction
Instructional Design
Instructional Effectiveness
Intervention
Learning
Meta Analysis
Phonetic form
Problem Solving
Secondary School Students
Student Characteristics
Systematic review
Teaching
Undergraduate Students
Australia
Asia
North America
Europe
direct instruction
learning through problem solving
preparation for future learning
productive failure
ISSN:0034-6543, 1935-1046
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:When learning a new concept, should students engage in problem solving followed by instruction (PS-I) or instruction followed by problem solving (I-PS)? Noting that there is a passionate debate about the design of initial learning, we report evidence from a meta-analysis of 53 studies with 166 comparisons that compared PS-I with I-PS design. Our results showed a significant, moderate effect in favor of PS-I (Hedge's g 0.36 [95% confidence interval 0.20; 0.51]). The effects were even stronger (Hedge's g ranging between 0.37 and 0.58) when PS-I was implemented with high fidelity to the principles of Productive Failure (PF), a subset variant of PS-I design. Students' grade level, intervention time span, and its (quasi-)experimental nature contributed to the efficacy of PS-I over I-PS designs. Contrasting trends were, however, observed for younger age learners (second to fifth graders) and for the learning of domain-general skills, for which effect sizes favored I-PS. Overall, an estimation of true effect sizes after accounting for publication bias suggested a strong effect sizefavoring PS-I (Hedge's g 0.87).
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ISSN:0034-6543
1935-1046
DOI:10.3102/00346543211019105