CONFRONTING CONFOUNDS: THE EFFECTS OF DELIBERATE ERRING IN LEARNING EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Abstract

The ability to conduct scientific inquiry is an important skill that students face difficulty in acquiring. A between-subjects study was therefore conducted to investigate whether deliberately making errors is better than errorless learning and cognitive conflict in helping students apply their knowledge of research design concepts to novel situations, and in evaluating the validity of scientific experiments. Participants underwent an instructional lesson, followed by a learning intervention, and subsequently completed timed test questions. Deliberate erring when coupled with error correction was found to be effective in improving students’ ability to apply the knowledge they have learnt to a different problem of a similar structure. Additionally, prior knowledge of the concepts taught moderated the ability to evaluate the soundness of a research design and the ability to anticipate errors that may be made when designing research. Our findings point towards reconsolidation of episodic memories as the mechanism driving the benefits of deliberate erring, where the level of prior knowledge determines the threshold as to whether the information to be learned is integrated into existing schemas or encoded as a separate representation. Practical implications of the findings in an educational context are discussed.