Options
Productive failure in learning the concept of variance
Citation
Kapur, M., & Lee, J. (2010, April). Productive failure in learning the concept of variance [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting (AERA), Denver, Colorado, USA.
Author
Kapur, Manu
•
Lee, June
Abstract
We report on a quasi-experimental study comparing a “productive failure (PF)” design with a “direct instruction (DI)” design for a curricular unit on variance. N = 140, 9th-grade mathematics students from an all-boys secondary school in Singapore experienced either DI or a PF design, where they solved a complex problem in small groups without the provision of any support up until a teacher-led consolidation. PF students produced a diversity of progressively sophisticated problem representations and methods for solving the problem but
were ultimately unsuccessful in developing the canonical solution. Despite seemingly failing in their problem-solving efforts, PF students performed on par with DI students on well-structured problems on variance, and significantly outperformed them on complex, data analysis problems.
Date Issued
April 2010
Description
This paper was presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting (AERA), held in Denver, Colorado, USA from 30 Apr to 4 May 2010