When Should Guidance Be Presented During Physics Instruction?

It is often recommended that providing students with explicit instruction by, for example, using a worked example to show them directly how to solve a problem may be more beneficial for transfer performance after learners attempt to solve the problem first on their own rather than presenting the worked example first. There is a concern, however, that the studies that have indicated a problem solving first advantage have often used mismatched manipulations between experimental groups such as adopting different learning materials between the groups in the learning phase. The current experiments compared example-problem and problem-example sequences in physics learning using strictly controlled conditions with examples and problems identical for both sequences and the order of activities as the only variable that was altered. The study also investigated the effect of presenting principle-based information as a form of instructional explanations to supplement worked examples or problems. The results supported the general conclusion that learning is facilitated by the early rather than later use of explicit guidance that prioritizes worked examples and by providing learners with other information that they may require to successfully solve transfer problems.