How to foster learning from introductory instructional explanations relating to the domain of chemistry through specific relevance instructions?

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The provision of instructional explanations is a frequently used means to introduce learners to new content. Introductory instructional explanations typically begin with a basics-part in which new content is explained in an abstract form, followed by an example-part that gives examples in which the abstract content is applied. However, empirical studies show that learners regularly process such introductory explanations insufficiently and, as a consequence, often fail to exploit their full potential. A promising means to foster critical (relevant) learning processes is the provision of specific relevance instructions. Specifically, recent studies show that both specific relevance instructions that require learners to relate the examples to the abstract basic content and basics-focusing specific relevance instructions that tell learners to elaborate on the abstract basic content without referring to the examples can foster learning outcomes. Up to now, however, the effects of these two types of specific relevance instructions have only been explored in separate studies that used different types of learning outcomes measures. Therefore, it is an open question as to whether basics-focusing specific relevance instructions and specific relevance instructions designed to elicit example-basics relations have differential effects. Furthermore, it is unclear whether these two types of specific relevance instructions should be combined over the course of fostering learning from introductory explanations. Regarding this question, recent findings point to the conflicting hypotheses that (a) basics-focusing specific relevance instructions might foster the effectiveness of subsequent specific relevance instructions designed to elicit example-basics relations or that (b) basics-focusing specific relevance instructions are redundant if learners are subsequently instructed to relate the examples to the abstract basic content. Against the background of recent findings that highlight the use of retrieval-based learning, a further open question is whether specific relevance instructions designed to elicit example-basics relations are more effective if learners have to respond to them without being able to refer back to the basics-part and thus are reliant on retrieval processes. In recent works it was hypothesized that eliciting of learning processes in a retrieval mode would be generally superior. In contrast, we argue that the effects of eliciting example-basics relations in a retrieval mode depend on whether learners have previously responded to basics-focusing specific relevance instructions. We propose two related experiments designed to address these open questions in the context of learning from introductory instructional explanations relating to the domain of chemistry.