In order to promote students' understanding of key concepts related to learning and teaching, I adopted a problem-based learning (PBL) approach in my educational psychology course. The course is organized around six problems. In the second problem, I ask students to explain why reciprocal teaching (RT), an approach to teaching reading comprehension, works. In theory, the students have all the knowledge they need to understand why RT works, but in practice initially they can't develop an effective explanation of it. The reciprocal teaching exercise tests students’ ability to explain why RT improves reading comprehension in terms of use newly learned ideas about learning and metacognition. Basically students try to explain the mental processes involved in questioning, clarifying, summarizing, predicting lead to comprehension. To facilitate their understanding, I conduct the class in four parts. Click on each button below to see how this class session promotes student understanding.

Summary of student performance.  I have used the RT exercise in both PBL and non-PBL classes. Overall, the results are encouraging. In effect, the PBL students were better able than the non-PBL students to transfer relevant concepts to the new problem—to carry out “intentional, mindful abstraction of something from one context and application in a new context” (Salomon and Perkins, 1989). PBL students used relevant disciplinary concepts and established plausible connections to explain why RT improves comprehension. Non-PBL students failed to make causal connections, and also resorted to intuitive beliefs as the basis for their explanations. More... (pdf, 68k)

I assessed students' understanding of RT both by assessing students' individual writing, and by recording their responses in the small group and large group discusssion.  The RT exercise is a "performance of understanding," an activity through which students develop and demonstrate their understanding (Wiske, 1998). The activity tests students' ability to transfer ideas about learning and metacognition to explain why reciprocal teaching improves reading comprehension. Students try to analyze and explain how specific reciprocal teaching skills (i.e., questioning, clarifying, summarizing, predicting) promote better understanding of reading material, and why children continue to understand what they read even after the reciprocal teaching method is no longer used in class. The RT exercise is a fairly rigorous test of understanding; the concepts are abstract and students have little background in learning theory.

Types of student responses.  Explanations differ in their strength or quality based on a variety of factors such as coherence and logical reasoning.  To evaluate the quality of students' explanations, I focused on a single factor—the type of connection between RT and comprehension—and disregarded other factors such as overall completeness or quality of formal writing.  My primary concern was students' ability to make a causal connection between RT and comprehension.  Students' responses contained three types of connections:

These three types of connections reflect different levels of understanding.  The causal connection is a plausible explanation in which the student elaborates on the cognitive consequences of using a specific mental skill.  Generic connections explain RT in terms of an unanalyzed force that makes understanding happen.  Descriptive responses do not explain why RT improves comprehension; they merely describe some aspect of RT.  Only the causal connection is a viable explanation.

Analysis and summary of student performance.  I have used the RT exercise in both PBL and non-PBL classes. In a non-PBL class, students focused on motivational factors to explain reciprocal teaching (e.g., puts responsibility on student, group learning increases interest, peer pressure, forces everyone to be involved, etc.). These students solved the RT problem with ideas they already had before they entered the class and disregarded the learning theory principles relevant to the problem.

The students used learning theory principles to explain RT; all 60 students in the two classes treated the problem as one of explaining how people learn when they read, rather than as a motivation problem.  This is in contrast to earlier years, when I didn't use a PBL format and students focused on motivation.  However, the quality of students' explanations this year still varied considerably. Thirty-four percent in the fall 1998 class and 43% in the spring 1999 class used one causal connection between reciprocal teaching and comprehension in their answers. This indicates a rudimentary understanding of how reciprocal teaching skills influence reading comprehension processes. Moreover, 28% and 35% of the fall and spring classes respectively, had multiple causal connections in their answers, indicating a more complex grasp of the cognitive processes involved in reciprocal teaching.

In my Problem Based Learning classes, the students used relevant disciplinary concepts and established plausible connections to explain why RT improves comprehension. In prior years, non-PBL students failed to make causal connections, and also resorted to intuitive beliefs as the basis for their explanations. In effect, the PBL students were better able than the non-PBL students to transfer relevant concepts to the new problem—to carry out "intentional, mindful abstraction of something from one context and application in a new context". In addition, the follow-up study suggests that student understanding persists; students were able to make causal connections about RT several months after the end of the course.

Even though a majority of the students in these two classes advanced beyond intuitive beliefs, a sizable portion of the classes did not make the kinds of causal connections (38% and 17% in Fall and Spring, respectively) I was looking for. These students just didn't "get it," even after studying the relevant concepts. The types of "wrong" answers suggest some reasons for students' lack of understanding. Descriptive responses indicate that students are probably still just trying to put together a coherent picture of what reciprocal teaching is, and cannot yet explain why it might affect reading comprehension. The large proportion of generic connections—assertions that RT "forces" the child to think—may reflect the influence of students' prior conceptions of learning. The idea that RT is an external force that makes understanding happen is consistent with a commonly held belief that learning is a process in which information is acquired through exposure, repetition and reinforcement (more). In other words, students' prior concept of learning led them to conclude that RT works because practicing the skills produces understanding. In contrast, the conceptual change model I espouse in the course construes new understanding as the result of "mental" interactions between prior knowledge and new information. Conceptual change takes place "inside the mind of the learner" and it may be much harder to imagine the kinds of mental activity associated with RT than it is to simply attribute understanding to the practice of observable behavior.