Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

A randomized-controlled study compared the preparatory effects of problem-posing on learning from subsequentinstruction. Students engaged in problem-posing either with solution generation (where they generated problems and solutionsto a novel situation) or problem-posing without solution generation (where they generated only problems) prior to learning anovel math concept. Problem-posing with solution generation prior to instruction resulted in significantly better conceptualknowledge, without any significant difference in procedural knowledge and transfer. These findings suggest that althoughsolution generation prior to instruction plays a critical role in the development of conceptual understanding, and generatingproblems can further enhance transfer.