Learning effects and Change of Academic Ability Brought by Individual Learning Course in Which Children Continue to Make Active Selections of Learning Strategy

1997 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 08610163
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 教育・社会系心理学
• Research Institution: Mukogawa Women's University, Junior College Division
• Principal Investigator: FUJITANI Tomoko Mukogawa Women's University, The Others (Department of Early Childhood Education), Assistant Professor, その他部局等, 助教授 (90199349)
• Project Period (FY): 1996 – 1997
• Keywords: learning strategy / metacognition / Aptitude-Treatment Interaction / learning course / educational environment

Research Abstract

Three educational experiments in two years examined the effects of the educational environment in which children were allowed to select the learning strategy successively. Subjects were 46 fifth grade children in initial period. They were divided into two experimental groups, namely, the group making individual learning course and the group of textbook referencing. It is intended that making individual learning course will foster the learning strategy including metacognitive learning strategy. Because one of two learning strategies were constructed by metacognitive strategy as learning strategy, not only selecting the metacognitive strategy, but also learning in the educational environment is considered as effective for the children.
Multiple regression analysis has revealed the following. The main effect of the pre-achievement test score was obtained in almost all the fundamental achievement tasks. Although the negative main effect of educational treatment was obtained in the early period of experiments, it has disappeared later. Decreasing the cognitive load was considered as its cause. And some Aptitude-Treatment Interactions (ATI) have found. The Interactions were obtained when using the pre-achievement test score and the learning style as aptitude.
It has become obvious that the treatment of making the individual learning course capitalized the aptitude in comparison with the usual learning depended the textbook, and that reflective children have benefited from the usual learning.
Children made choice of the learning strategy not from their metacognition, but from their interest or easiness for them to solve tasks. Even if they selected the metacognitive learning, they returned to the learning that they could feel like arithmetic without motivational support. It is necessary to train children the metacognitive learning strategy to select their adaptive learning and their own learning course in order to acquire the real academic abilities.