A Study On The Effect Of Learning From Worked Example With Assisted Self-explanation Prompts In Geography

Worked example plays so important a role in Geography teaching that how to improve the effect of learning from worked examples is an important topic of the research about Geography education.Assisting self-explanation prompts is a strategy that has been proved to be effective on learning from worked examples.Therefore,the presented research,taking "the formation process of thermal circulation" as the worked examples material,explores the effect of learning from worked examples with assisted self-explanation prompts in Geography.The control experiments were conducted to contrast the changes of the understanding level about "the formation process of thermal circulation" before and after learning from worked examples,between experimental group(learning from worked example with assisted self-explanation prompts)and control group(learning from traditional worked example).It is found that:(1)Learning from worked example with assisted self-explanation prompts is helpful to enhance students' understanding of the geographical principle,the formation of thermal circulation.(2)In the student group that with highest academic level,the positive effect of learning from worked example with assisted selfexplanation is significant.Because the assisted self-explanation prompts elicited constructive responses,"check-revise one's existing understanding",from the students,which helps to deepen their concept understanding about "atmospheric pressure",and lead to improve the robustness of the correct mental model that built in the process of learning from micro-lecture.(3)In the student group that with medium and lowest academic level,the results about the effect of learning from worked example with assisted self-explanation,are not statistically significant,but do suggest that this learning strategy is helpful to enhance students' understanding.For one thing,the assisted self-explanation prompts help some students to improve the robustness of the correct mental model that built in the process of learning from micro-lecture.For another,some students with lowest academic level who do not benefit much from micro-learning.Therefore,they can't acquire the understanding about some key concepts and the connections among them.The assisted self-explanation prompts in the worked example induce them to identify and complete their missing part so that improve their understanding of the geographical principle,the formation of thermal circulation.(4)Students' attitudes to assisted self-explanation prompts questions and whether or not to provide feedback for correctness on students' self-explanations,are important factors affecting the effect of learning from worked example with assisted self-explanation prompts.(5)There are two main misconceptions of the concept "atmospheric pressure".Eventually,some suggestions,including how to design the assisted selfexplanation prompts questions and how to teach the concept "atmospheric pressure" are provided for Geography educators.