ABSTRACT
The reported study compared the learning effects of four experimental conditions that differed by the levels of instructional guidance during physics problem solving-related activities. The conditions were problem-solving only, problem-solving with guidance about the relevant principles, problem-solving with principle guidance and reflection on the solution attempts, and fully guided worked examples. These were followed by identical explicit fully guided instruction during the next stage. Sixty Year 10 students participated in the study. The results showed that contrary to the productive failure hypothesis, the initial problem-solving activity followed by explicit instruction did not result in superior learning compared to the fully explicit instruction only. In accordance with cognitive load theory’s emphasis on explicit guidance, the problem-solving group with principle guidance and reflection outperformed the other two problem-solving groups without reflection or principle guidance.
