Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: Contrary to the fairly established notion in the learning and cognitive sciences that un-scaffolded processes rarely lead to meaningful learning, this study reports a hidden efficacy of such processes and a method for extracting it.Compared to scaffolded, well-structured problem-solving groups, unscaffolded, ill-structured problem-solving groups struggled with defining and solving the problems.Their discussions were chaotic and divergent, resulting in poor group performance.However, despite failing in their problem-solving efforts, these participants outperformed their counterparts in the wellstructured condition on transfer measures, suggesting a latent productivity in the failure.The study's contrasting-case design provided participants in the un-scaffolded condition with an opportunity to contrast the ill-structured problems that they had solved in groups with the well-structured problems they solved individually afterwards.This contrast facilitated a spontaneous transfer, helping them perform significantly better on the individual ill-structured problem-solving tasks subsequently.Implications of productive failure for the development of adaptive expertise are discussed.
Author: Manu Kapur
Institution: National Institute of Education
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2625577471