Supporting student learning from diagnosing erroneous examples when contrasting them with worked examples in the physics classroom

Abstract

ABSTRACT Troubleshooting activities require students to diagnose teacher-crafted erroneous examples by detecting and explaining the conceptual errors driving them. In a previous study, the author tested whether diagnosing erroneous examples and then scoring them using a rubric that contained the related worked examples, a step-by-step strategy to solve a problem, would help 8th graders studying simple electric circuits detect and learn from the conceptual errors in the erroneous examples. The findings showed that this graded activity was more effective than the traditional activity with the same worked examples but without rubrics. To determine whether older students with greater metacognitive skills still need the support provided by the graded activity, five 10th grade advanced physics classes completed a pretest/intervention/posttest after finishing a unit on geometric optics. Students in each class were randomly assigned to the graded (69 students) or the traditional activity (73 students). Students assigned to the graded activity detected and learned more from the conceptual errors in the erroneous examples than students administered the traditional activity. Thus, the findings of the current and the previous studies suggest the greater effectiveness of the graded activity as compared to the traditional activity, regardless of the students’ level of metacognitive awareness or topic.