Productive Failure (PF) is an instructional design that implements a problem-solving phase which aims at preparing students for learning from a subsequent instruction. PF has been shown to facilitate students' conceptual knowledge acquisition in the mathematical domain. Collaboration has been described as a vital design component of PF, but…

Productive Failure is an instructional approach in which students engage in problem-solving attempts prior to instruction. The Productive Failure approach has been found to be more supportive for conceptual knowledge acquisition during subsequent instruction compared to a direct-instruction condition in which students receive instruction first…

The Productive Failure (PF) approach prompts students to attempt to solve a problem prior to instruction -- at which point they typically fail. Yet, research on PF shows that students who are involved in problem solving prior to instruction gain more conceptual knowledge from the subsequent instruction compared to students who receive the…

Studies on the productive failure (PF) approach have demonstrated that attempting to solve a problem prepares students more effectively for later instruction compared to observing failed problem-solving attempts prior to instruction. However, the examples of failure used in these studies did not display the problem-solving-and-failing…

Research on productive failure suggests that attempting to solve a problem prior to instruction facilitates conceptual understanding compared to receiving instruction prior to problem solving. The assumptions are that during the problem-solving phase, students activate their prior knowledge, become aware of their knowledge gaps, and discover deep…

The current work builds on research demonstrating the effectiveness of Productive Failure (PF) for learning. While the effectiveness of PF has been demonstrated for STEM learning, it has not yet been investigated whether PF is also beneficial for learning in non-STEM domains. Given this need to test PF for learning in domains other than…

This paper presents a fine-grained process analysis of 22 students in a classroom-based learning setting. The students engaged (and failed) in problem-solving attempts prior to instruction (i.e., the Productive-Failure approach). We used the HeuristicsMiner algorithm to analyze the data of a quasi-experimental study. The applied algorithm allowed…

Recently, there has been a growing interest in learning approaches that combine two phases: an initial problem-solving phase followed by an instruction phase (PS-I). Two often cited examples of instructional approaches following the PS-I scheme include Productive Failure and Invention. Despite the growing interest in PS-I approaches, to the best…

Learners who lack knowledge often also lack the ability to assess their limited competence correctly. Due to the incorrect self-assessment, they are unlikely to apply strategies that would help them to acquire relevant knowledge. This effect is known as the double curse of incompetence. When students solve problems prior to being taught the…