Generative Learning: Which Strategies for What Age?
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Generative Learning: Which Strategies for What Age? Garvin Brod 1,2 Accepted: 6 September 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
Generative learning strategies are intended to improve students’ learning by prompting them to actively make sense of the material to be learned. But are they effective for all students? This review provides an overview of six popular generative learning strategies: concept mapping, explaining, predicting, questioning, testing, and drawing. Its main purpose is to review for what ages the effectiveness of these strategies has been demonstrated and whether there are indications of age-related differences in their effectiveness. The description of each strategy covers (1) how it is supposed to work, (2) the evidence on its effectiveness in different age groups, and (3) if there are age-related differences in its effectiveness. It is found that while all six generative learning strategies reviewed have proven effective for university students, evidence is mixed for younger students. Whereas some strategies (practice testing, predicting) seem to be effective already in lower-elementary-school children, others (drawing, questioning) seem to be largely ineffective until secondary school. The review closes with a call for research on the cognitive and metacognitive prerequisites of generative learning that can explain these differences. Keywords Generative learning strategies . Active learning . Constructive learning . Developmental differences . Children . Effective learning techniques Teaching an 8-year-old is different from teaching a 16-year-old. Although this is a trivial statement for educators, the implications are surprisingly often ignored in educational research. Should teachers use different strategies depending on learners’ age? Excellent reviews and meta-analyses have compared different learning strategies with the goal of finding the ones most effective for all learners (e.g., Dunlosky et al. 2013; Fiorella and Mayer 2015, 2016; Hattie et al. 1996; Yiping et al. 2001). But are the strategies thus identified equally effective in all age groups? This is an open question because the majority of studies included in these
* Garvin Brod [email protected]
1
DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2
Department of Psychology, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Educational Psychology Review
reviews were performed with university students, and there has been little systematic research regarding age-related differences in strategies’ effectiveness. The current review is intended to shed light on the question of whether there are age-related differences in the effectiveness of a particular group of strategies—generative learning strategies (GLSs). GLSs are grounded in the constructivist view of learning, which posits that learning is an active construction process that is based on an individual’s prior knowledge (see Bonwell and Eison 1991; von Glasersfeld 1983; Wittrock 1985). For the purpose of this review, GLSs are def
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