Advances in Health Sciences Education (AHSE) has been at the forefront of the cognitive wave in health professions education for the past 25 years. One example is research on productive failure, a teaching strategy that asks learners to attempt to generate solutions to difficult problems before receiving instruction. This study compared the effectiveness of productive failure with indirect failure to further characterize the underpinning cognitive mechanisms of productive failure. Year one pharmacy students (N = 42) were randomly assigned to a productive failure or an indirect failure learning condition. The problem of estimating renal function based on serum creatinine was described to participants in the productive failure learning condition, who were then asked to generate a solution. Participants in the indirect failure condition learned about the same problem and were given incorrect solutions that other students had created, as well as the Cockcroft-Gault formula, and asked to compare and contrast the equations. Immediately thereafter all participants completed a series of tests designed to assess acquisition, application, and preparation for future learning (PFL). The tests were repeated after a 1-week delay. Participants in the productive failure condition outperformed those in the indirect failure condition, both on the immediate PFL assessment, and after a 1-week delay. These results emphasize the crucial role of generation in learning. When preparing novice students to learn new knowledge in the future, generating solutions to problems prior to instruction may be more effective than simply learning about someone else's mistakes. Struggle and failure are most productive when experienced personally by a learner because it requires the learner to engage in generation, which deepens conceptual understanding.

中文翻译：

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探索为什么我们从生产性失败中学习：来自认知和学习科学的见解


健康科学教育进展 (AHSE) 在过去 25 年中一直处于健康专业教育认知浪潮的前沿。一个例子是对生产性失败的研究，这是一种教学策略，要求学习者在接受指导之前尝试找到困难问题的解决方案。这项研究比较了生产性失败与间接失败的有效性，以进一步表征生产性失败的基础认知机制。一年级药学学生 (N = 42) 被随机分配到生产性失败或间接失败学习条件。向生产性失败学习条件下的参与者描述了根据血清肌酐估计肾功能的问题，然后要求他们提出解决方案。间接失效条件下的参与者了解了同样的问题，并给出了其他学生创建的错误解决方案以及 Cockcroft-Gault 公式，并要求对方程进行比较和对比。此后，所有参与者立即完成了一系列旨在评估习得、应用和未来学习准备（PFL）的测试。延迟 1 周后再次进行测试。无论是立即 PFL 评估还是延迟 1 周后，生产性失败条件下的参与者都优于间接失败条件下的参与者。这些结果强调了世代在学习中的关键作用。当让新手学生为将来学习新知识做好准备时，在教学之前提出问题的解决方案可能比简单地了解别人的错误更有效。 当学习者亲身经历时，斗争和失败是最有成效的，因为它要求学习者参与生成，从而加深概念理解。