Abstract
Successful learning from scientific text depends upon a learner's ability to integrate successively encountered ideas in the text. High school and university students read texts that presented competing theories for ongoing scientific problems (e.g., the gradualist vs. catastrophic theories of dinosaur extinction) under two conditions: an integrated-text format versus a separate-text format. The integrated-text format was designed to portray science as inquiry and offered each theory as a possible solution to the scientific problem. The separate text presented the two theories successively in separate texts and made no mention of their conflicting nature. In general, the integrated-text format tended to facilitate performance on tests that measured integration of ideas rather than memory for discrete facts. The study showed that successful learning is also affected by learner characteristics, such as the maturity of the learner's epistemic views about knowledge and the capacity of the learner's working memory. The results suggest that integration processes contribute significantly to students' abilities to gain a deep understanding of science from written texts.
Published Version
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