ABSTRACT
Learning from worked-out examples is of major importance for initial skill acquisition in well-structured domains such as mathematics and physics. However, only those learners who actively explain the rationale of the solution steps presented in the examples to themselves profit from this learning method. The setting of situational incentives has shown not to be very promising. The training and prompting as well as designing learning materials can substantially foster self-explanations and, thereby, learning outcomes. In addition, well-designed instructional explanations can further enhance learning. Instruction should induce different learning activities during the course of skill acquisition. How these activities can be instructionally fostered can be derived from our experimental findings. Most learners are to be characterized as passive or superficial self-explainers.
