Self-Explanation and Reading Strategy Training (SERT) Improves Low-Knowledge Students’ Science Course Performance

ABSTRACT

This study demonstrates the generalization of previous laboratory results showing the benefits of Self-Explanation Reading Training (SERT) to college students’ course exam performance. The participants were 265 students enrolled in an Introductory Biology course, 59 of whom were provided with SERT. The results showed that SERT benefited students who began the course with less knowledge about science but did not benefit students with greater prior science knowledge. Moreover, across the three exams in the course, low-knowledge students who received SERT performed as well as high-knowledge students, whereas low-knowledge students without SERT performed more poorly than high-knowledge students. Hence, instruction on how to self-explain and use comprehension strategies allowed low-knowledge students to overcome their knowledge deficits. These results provide further evidence that self-explanation in combination with instruction and practice using comprehension strategies helps students to more effectively process and understand science.

Funding

I am particularly grateful to Jennifer Scott who helped to conduct this experiment. This project was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (REC-0089271; IIS-0735682) and the Institute for Education Sciences (R305A130124). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or Institute for Education Sciences.

Notes

¹ ANOVA as well as correlational and regression analyses confirmed that reading skill did not significantly contribute to exam performance and did not interact with the effectiveness of training.

² These effects and the interaction remained reliable when the ability measures were entered as covariates.

Additional information

Funding

I am particularly grateful to Jennifer Scott who helped to conduct this experiment. This project was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (REC-0089271; IIS-0735682) and the Institute for Education Sciences (R305A130124). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or Institute for Education Sciences.