Self-explanation activities in statics: A knowledge-building activity to promote conceptual change

Background: The complexity and diversity of problems and concepts in different engineering subjects represent a great challenge for students. Traditional approaches to teaching statics are ineffective in helping some students overcome the learning barriers that underlie learning statics and developing problem-solving skills. Purpose: This article explores how self-explanation activities may support student learning in statics. Specifically, this study examines the characteristics of student self-explanations of worked examples and their relationship with students ' conceptual change. Design/Method: The study population included 147 undergraduate engineering students enrolled in a statics course. The students wrote their self-explanations at each step of an incomplete or incorrect worked example in the context of static equilibrium. Students ' self-explanations were qualitatively analyzed using content analysis to identify the approaches used. We used descriptive and inferential statistics to identify differences in students ' conceptual understanding of statics, based on their approach to self-explanation. Results: We identified four self-explaining approaches: restricted explanations, elemental explanations, inferential explanations, and strategic explanations. After completing the activity, students who self-explained incomplete worked examples showed better results in the quality of their explanations and conceptual change than students in the incorrect worked example condition. Conclusions: The findings suggest a relationship between the type of worked example, students' approaches to self-explaining, and their conceptual change and problem-solving skills in statics. To increase the quality of the students' explanations and to improve their conceptual understanding, additional prompts or initial training in self-explaining may be required within the worked-examples context.