Robust effects of the efficacy of explicit failure-driven scaffolding in problem-solving prior to instruction: A replication and extension

Enriching problem-solving followed by instruction with explanatory accounts of emotions

“…In contrast to unscaffolded PS-I, in which students work with their own ideas and what they know, scaffolding PS-I toward failure or success by providing specific (sub)optimal representations to generate is likely to provide additional sensemaking opportunities, and thus relatively greater opportunities for raising knowledge gap awareness about solution strategies that may not work. In fact, self-reported data for the current sample reported in Sinha and Kapur (2021a), where the difference in scores for students' knowledge gap awareness between the scaffolded and unscaffolded PS-I conditions was high (Cohen's d > 0.5), empirically supports this conjecture. Further, irrespective of whether scaffolds decrease or increase the degrees of freedom in the task, they present new information that adds to the already unpredictable nature of the problem-solving phase because of the lack of verifiable outcomes.…”

“…Existing empirical studies that actively elicit or induce failure mainly rely on adding challenges, for example, via forced guessing-to the best of my knowledge, research on explicitly scaffolding problemsolving toward failure by nudging students to reason with suboptimal representations, or deliberate guided failure is non-existent in cognitive and educational psychology (Sinha et al, 2021). Taking inspiration from structuring versus problematizing-focused accounts of scaffolding that either decrease or increase the degrees of freedom in a task (Reiser, 2004), I have therefore previously designed a classroom study (Sinha et al, 2021) and a follow-up lab study (Sinha & Kapur, 2021a) to evaluate the pedagogical value of failure-driven and success-driven scaffolding in preparatory problem-solving. Empirical results across these studies suggest that nudging students to generate suboptimal representations (a) affords exploration of the problemspace, (b) provides variable practice, and (c) traps potential misconceptions, despite challenging students' understanding and making them uncomfortable in the short-term.…”

“…Along with providing empathy concerning possible frustration of students, a positive classroom climate is also likely to increase their awareness of the pedagogical benefits of engaging in errorful generation. In the aforementioned studies (Sinha & Kapur, 2021a;Sinha et al, 2021) for instance, the (a) problem-solving activity was explicitly situated in authentic interdisciplinary domain practices upfront via the information sheet participants studied prior to providing consent, (b) appropriate socio-mathematical norms were enforced, for example, by setting the expectation that multiple solutions were expected and failure was acceptable and valued, and (c) motivational prompts were used to keep students engaged in generation via multiple task announcements.…”

“…This means that I view the link between cognition and affect as reciprocal, or as dynamically interacting systems that strengthen and weaken each other in a multitude of ways. This has direct implications for the measurements I have deployed within the PS-I learning design in past work (Sinha & Kapur, 2021a;Sinha et al, 2021). These measurements focus both on (a) cognitive engagement, for example, how invested students are in a task, their willingness to exert effort, and (b) emotional engagement, for example, students' attitudes about the learning task, including emotional displays and subjectively expressed feelings that they can engage.…”

“…I randomly assign students to three PS-I designs, with each group receiving either no explicit scaffolding (henceforth referred to as the Productive Failure condition), success-driven scaffolding, or failuredriven scaffolding in the problem-solving phase (Sinha & Kapur, 2021a). This allows evaluating the extent to which emotion inference is influenced by the learning design.…”