Assignment: how to incorporate self-explanations into instruction and how to assess the impact of
these interventions.
Dasha Bunks
Liberty University
PSYC 775 - Teaching of Psychology
Dr. Winn
2022
Introduction
Incorporating self-explanation into instruction can be relatively straightforward and very beneficial for
students. The following section provides advice on when and how to incorporate self-explanations into
instruction and how to assess the impact of these interventions.
Move along the passive-active-constructive-interactive spectrum
Thinking about instructional interventions as passive, active, constructive, or interactive provides a
general framework with which one can structure classroom activities. Based upon evidence from
decades of research, interactive activities are better than constructive activities, constructive activities
are generally better than active learning activities, and all are better than passive learning (Chi, 2009).
Classifications are based on overt student activities – that is, what one can directly observe students
doing. Passive activities are when students are not overtly engaged in any activity. Typical examples of
passive activities are watching a lecture, video, or reading text without any additional action such as
note-taking, asking questions, or discussing with a peer.
Of course, students listening to lecture may be very active internally, mentally self-explaining or making
deep connections. However, there are no overt behaviors to ensure those processes are occurring, so
those activities are classified as passive. Active learning activities are where students are physically doing
something during learning. Active behaviors include underlining, gesturing, highlighting, navigating a
website, or copying down lecture notes. The overt physical activities ensure that learners are paying
attention to some minimal degree. Constructive activities involve generating some kind of output that
goes beyond the given instructional information.
Examples of constructive activities include creating a concept map, drawing a diagram, solving a novel
problem, and self-explanations. Interactive learning activities are when students engage in substantive
dialogue with another, where the "other" can be a peer, tutor, teacher, or computer agent. Interactive
activities require that the talk between partners contain dialogue indicative of building, sharing, and
refining ideas and not just regurgitating or one person dominating the 98 conversation. In general,
activities within a category can be thought of as having equivalent effects on learning in comparison to
activities in another category. For instance, an interactive activity will be better than a constructive
activity. However, activities within a category can vary in their effectiveness. For example, two
constructive activities like concept-mapping and self-explanation can have different impacts on learning.
Results from self-explanation studies can be interpreted within this framework. Self-explanation is a
constructive activity and thus better than passive or active learning activities (as demonstrated by many
of the aforementioned studies). In many cases, self-explanation activities have more benefit than other
constructive activities (Fonseca & Chi, in press).
Self-explanation can also be used to augment other constructive or interactive activities. For instance,
an easy way to make self-explanation interactive is to have student dyads generate joint explanations.
Going beyond a passive lecture
Generally speaking, an easy way to improve instruction is to move along the passive-active-constructive
interactive spectrum. If you typically lecture to your students, you can incorporate something as simple
as note-taking, or perhaps having all of your students’ gesture for some key concept. An example could
be to have the class perform "the wave" to demonstrate energy transfer with transverse waves.
A quick look across the classroom or lecture hall would ensure that students are actually writing down
notes or standing up in time for the wave. Better instruction would include constructive activities such
as self-explaining. The reviewed studies provide insight into how one can implement self-explanation
strategies into classes, even into large lecture hall settings. A number of studies demonstrate that
explicit training in self-explanation provides great benefit to students (Bielaczyc et al., 1995; McNamara,
2004). Devoting part of an initial class or discussion section to self-explanation training involving an
introduction, modeling (could be a video), and then individual or group practice with either text or
problems (depending on the domain) could be an invaluable way to start the class. During class, one can
incorporate a simple exercise such as having students read a relevant passage and then provide
instructions to, for example, "Explain the meaning and relevance of each sentence or paragraph to the
overall purpose of the text. Ask yourself questions like: What new information does this add? How does
it relate to previous information?" (Griffin et al., 2008).
Instructors can also give guidance as to how students can incorporate self-explanation strategies after
class. For example, college and high school students who were taught to come up with and answer their
own "why" questions following class outperformed students who were not given any direction (King,
1992). Incorporating interactive activities can be as easy as having students generate joint explanations
in dyads instead of explaining to themselves. A similar strategy is to prompt students to generate
explanations that will be used to teach another student. Simple tweaks such as these can have a large
effect on learning compared to only self-explaining (Coleman, Brown, & Rivkin, 1997; Hausmann, van de
Sande, & VanLehn, 2008).
In each of these cases, care should be taken to confirm that students’ actions are, in fact, aligned with
the categories. For instance, one could set up a jigsaw activity where students build explanations to then
share and collaborate to build a larger understanding of a topic (interactive). However, the actual jigsaw
could just be students retelling their explanations therefore the activity is really only constructive
(Fonseca & Chi, in press).
Use Instructional Materials that Facilitate Self-Explanation
In addition to incorporating self-explanation into instruction, one can also select instructional materials
to complement or enhance the self-explanation effect. Based on the research studies, using multiple
representations in instructional materials can facilitate self-explanations. Thus, if you have students self-
explain a certain concept or procedure, try to include diagrams or technology-enhanced representations
like simulations to help students generate self-explanations and learn with understanding. Giving
students incorrect examples can also augment learning through self-explanation. Providing
opportunities for students to explain why something is wrong, whether it is an incorrect solution to a
problem, an incorrect inference from a section of text, or an incorrect model of a system, enables
students to confront and revise their own incorrect ideas. Another way to augment self-explanation
could be to provide more coherent instructional materials. Making sure that information presented to
students carefully elaborates on concepts or connections and articulates what may even seem to be
redundant or obvious can help students learn through selfexplanation. Instructors, as experts, may gloss
over or omit pieces of information because they understand the concepts well. Novice students often
need these pieces to build understanding (Feldon, 2007). Giving students coherent text can help
facilitate mental model revision through self-explanation (Ainsworth & Burcham, 2007).
Adapt to Specific Contexts
Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, the domain and the situation of the learners,
instructors need to be able to adapt to use different kinds of strategies or prompts (Gadgil,
NokesMalach, & Chi, 2012). For example, if you are teaching relatively new material that students may
have little to no prior knowledge about, you may want to try self-explanations that encourage gap-filling
prompts so that learners can develop a mental model of a situation (Nokes, Hausmann, VanLehn, &
Gershman, 2011). Later in instruction when students have more prior knowledge about a subject, one
can try approaches that encourage model revision, such as comparing incorrect alongside correct
examples.
Assessing learning with self-explanation
An important consideration when learning with self-explanation is to look at the quality of the
explanation itself. What are the students saying or writing? Are they just regurgitating bits of text or
making connections to underlying principles? Do the explanations contain predictions about what is
going to happen, try to go beyond the given instruction or do they just superficially gloss over what is
already there? Students who make principle-based, anticipative, or inference-containing explanations
benefit the most from self-explaining. If students seem to be failing to make good explanations, one can
try to give prompts with more assistance. In practice, this will likely take iteration by the instructor to
figure out what combination of content, activity and prompt provides the most benefit to students. As
with any educational intervention, it is vital that the assessment aligns with the instruction and targeted
learning outcomes. Self-explanation activities are no exception. Instructors should pay special attention
that their assessments cover the targeted concepts. For instance, an instructor could incorporate self-
explanation activities while students learn about a particular physics concept but then give an
assessment that requires students to solve a problem that is associated with that concept. 100 Although
solving a problem could be a measure of some kind of transfer of the conceptual knowledge, conceptual
items should be included if one is interested in the direct impact of self-explaining.
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