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

提供教学解释是向学习者介绍新内容的一种常用手段。入门的教学解释通常从基础开始--以抽象的形式解释新内容，然后是例子--给出应用抽象内容的例子。然而，实证研究表明，学习者经常对这样的介绍性解释处理得不够充分，结果往往无法充分挖掘他们的潜力。培养批判性(相关)学习过程的一个有希望的方法是提供具体的相关性指导。具体地说，最近的研究表明，无论是要求学习者将例子与抽象的基本内容联系起来的具体关联指导，还是侧重于告诉学习者详细说明抽象的基本内容而不参考范例的基础指导，都可以促进学习结果。然而，到目前为止，这两种类型的具体关联指导的效果只在使用不同类型的学习结果测量的单独研究中被探索过。因此，基础知识--侧重于特定关联指令和旨在引出实例的特定关联指令--是否具有不同的效果，这是一个悬而未决的问题。此外，在促进从介绍性解释中学习的过程中，这两种类型的具体相关性说明是否应该结合起来还不清楚。关于这个问题，最近的研究结果指出了相互矛盾的假设：(A)注重基础的具体相关性说明可能会促进随后旨在引出示例-基本关系的特定相关性说明的有效性，或者(B)如果随后指示学习者将示例与抽象的基本内容相关联，则侧重于基础的特定相关性说明是多余的。最近的研究结果强调了基于检索的学习的使用，在此背景下，另一个悬而未决的问题是，如果学习者不得不在不能回顾基础部分的情况下做出回应，从而依赖于检索过程，那么旨在引出例子-基础关系的具体相关性指导是否会更有效。在最近的研究中，人们假设以提取模式引发学习过程通常会更好。相反，我们认为，在提取模式中引出例子-基础关系的效果取决于学习者以前是否对以基础为重点的特定关联指令做出了反应。我们提出了两个相关的实验，旨在解决这些开放问题的背景下，学习有关化学领域的介绍性教学解释。

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.