Learning from Examples Via Self-Explanations

Abstract

This chapter describes learning, problem solving, self–explanations, the role of examples in learning, individual differences, and physics. A customary approach to the study of problem solving is to observe how people with different skills solve problems by collecting and analyzing the protocols and formulating models to capture the solution processes. There are many knowledge–rich domains that have a less algorithmic character, but some require diagnostic problem solving, such as troubleshooting, which is quite different from the traditional classroom–type problem solving that interests. The instructional point of view, worked–out examples seem to be a primary source of information from which students learn and acquire problem solving procedures. The degree to which self–generated explanations foster learning is a function of the accuracy and completeness of the self–explanations in interpreting the examples in terms of the principles introduced in the text. The self–explanations had the characteristic of adding tacit knowledge about the actions of the example–solution.