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Does calling it “Morgan's way” reduce student learning? Evaluating the effect of person‐presentation during comparison and discussion of worked examples in mathematics classrooms
Author(s) -
Loehr Abbey,
RittleJohnson Bethany,
Durkin Kelley,
Star Jon R.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3670
Subject(s) - generalizability theory , presentation (obstetrics) , psychology , context (archaeology) , generalization , harm , mathematics education , unit (ring theory) , social psychology , mathematics , developmental psychology , medicine , paleontology , mathematical analysis , biology , radiology
Summary Mathematics textbooks sometimes present worked examples as being generated by particular fictitious students (i.e., person‐presentation ). However, there are indicators that person‐presentation of worked examples may harm generalization of the presented strategies to new problems. In the context of comparing and discussing worked examples during extended classroom instruction, the current study compared the impact of person‐presentation to strategy labels on students' posttest accuracy and ratings of strategy generalizability. Five algebra teachers and their 168 students used worked examples either presented using fictitious students or with a strategy label during a multiweek unit on equation solving , with teachers randomly assigned to condition. All students compared and discussed the worked examples. In this context, we found no effect of condition on student accuracy at posttest, nor on their ratings of the generalizability of the presented strategies. We discuss why previously found negative effects of person‐presentation may not have extended to this context.