Cognitive Science 39 (8):1965-1978 (2015)
Abstract |
A common practice in textbooks is to introduce concepts or strategies in association with specific people. This practice aligns with research suggesting that using “real-world” contexts in textbooks increases students’ motivation and engagement. However, other research suggests this practice may interfere with transfer by distracting students or leading them to tie new knowledge too closely to the original learning context. The current study investigates the effects on learning and transfer of connecting mathematics strategies to specific people. A total of 180 college students were presented with an example of a problem-solving strategy that was either linked with a specific person or presented without a person. Students who saw the example without a person were more likely to correctly transfer the novel strategy to new problems than students who saw the example presented with a person. These findings are the first evidence that using people to present new strategies is harmful for learning and transfer
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Keywords | Abstraction Transfer Problem solving Mathematics instruction |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
DOI | 10.1111/cogs.12224 |
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References found in this work BETA
Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts.Bruno Latour & Steve Woolgar - 1986 - Princeton University Press.
How Children Block Learning From Ignorant Speakers.Mark A. Sabbagh & Dana Shafman - 2009 - Cognition 112 (3):415-422.
Citations of this work BETA
The Cognitive Costs of Context: The Effects of Concreteness and Immersiveness in Instructional Examples.Samuel B. Day, Benjamin A. Motz & Robert L. Goldstone - 2015 - Frontiers in Psychology 6.
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