Expertise reversal effects in writing-to-learn

Abstract

This article presents two longitudinal studies that investigated expertise reversal effects in journal writing. In Experiment 1, students wrote regular journal entries over a whole term. The experimental group received a combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts. The control group received no prompts. In the first half of the term, the experimental group applied more cognitive and metacognitive strategies in their journals and showed higher learning outcomes than the control group. Towards the end of the term, the amount of cognitive and metacognitive strategies elicited by the experimental group decreased while the number of cognitive strategies applied by the control group increased. Accordingly, the experimental group lost its superiority on learning outcomes. In order to avoid these negative long-term effects of prompts, a gradual and adaptive fading-out of the prompts was introduced in the experimental group in Experiment 2 while a control group received permanent prompts. The results showed that, over the course of the term, the fading group applied increasingly more cognitive strategies while the control group applied fewer and fewer cognitive strategies. Accordingly, at the end of the term, the permanent prompts group showed substantially lower learning outcomes than the fading group. Together, these results provide evidence for an expertise reversal effect in writing-to-learn. The more the students became skilled in journal writing and internalized the desired strategies, the more the external guidance by prompts became a redundant stimulus that interfered with the students' internal tendency to apply the strategies and, thus, induced extraneous cognitive load. Accordingly, a gradual fading-out of the prompts in line with the learners' growing competencies proved to be effective in mitigating the negative side-effects of the provided instructional support.

The Use of Solved Example Problems for Fostering Strategies of Self-Regulated Learning in Journal Writing

“…A reasonable explanation for this could be that even the combination of solved example problems and prompts did not provide sufficient instructional guidance with regard to the application of high-quality metacognitive strategies. This finding is in line with previous studies which indicate that it may be generally more difficult for learners to apply metacognitive strategies to a high standard than to apply high-quality cognitive strategies (e.g., [24,34]). The application of metacognitive strategies is possibly a learning activity that students tend to minimise naturally because they do not find it very rewarding to question their own understanding [24].…”

“…This finding is in line with previous studies which indicate that it may be generally more difficult for learners to apply metacognitive strategies to a high standard than to apply high-quality cognitive strategies (e.g., [24,34]). The application of metacognitive strategies is possibly a learning activity that students tend to minimise naturally because they do not find it very rewarding to question their own understanding [24]. In the present study, this might have been even aggravated by the fact that the learners were merely prompted to monitor their understanding but were not prompted to plan and apply remedial activities in order to overcome potential comprehension difficulties.…”

“…However, as learners hardly focused on procedural aspects of fractional arithmetic in their prompts responses, learners in the solvedexample-group did not outperform their counterparts in the group that solely received prompts with respect to the acquisition of procedural knowledge even though they applied cognitive and metacognitive strategies to a higher standard. Note that-to our knowledge-none of previous studies in the field of fostering cognitive and metacognitive strategies of self-regulated learning in learning journals (e.g., [10,13,24,42]) reported separate scores for conceptual knowledge and procedural knowledge. Therefore, it is an open question as to whether the cognitive and metacognitive prompts generally tend to focus learners on conceptual aspects of the learning contents or whether the results are specific for this study.…”

“…(i.e., elaboration prompt; see [13]). In experiments with university students, prompts to induce cognitive and metacognitive strategies were found to foster both highquality strategies of self-regulated learning and learning outcomes (e.g., [13,15,24]). However, studies with high school students revealed less promising results.…”

Journal Writing with Peer Feedback: A Friend or A Foe for EFL Learners

“…For the start, the teacher should provide them with some writing topics or writing prompts in a fading-process to ease the students who have had no experience in this activity. After that, the students will learn to write on any topics of interest as the expertise reversal effects of journal writing found in the study of Nückles, Hübner, Dümer, and Renkl (2010) that, as the students became more skilled at journal writing, its prompts were getting less important; so it should be done in a fading-process.…”