ABSTRACT

When using the Internet to learn about complex topics or issues, students often encounter information that is both complementary and conflicting. Building on prior work identifying differences in how students reason about multiple conflicting texts, we examine students’ connection formation and summative conceptualization of texts systematically designed to vary in a number of ways. We examine students’ connection formation and summative conceptualization of texts introducing consistent or conflicting main ideas, accompanied by supporting reasons that are overlapping or distinct. We investigate the extent to which students form three types of connections across texts: evidentiary (i.e., corroborating specific information across texts), thematic (i.e., connecting main ideas), and contextual (i.e., comparing texts’ meta-features such as author). Moreover, we analyze how students summatively describe texts related to one another in a variety of ways. In general, the text condition reflecting the greatest degree of cross-textual consistency (i.e., texts that included consistent main ideas and that presented overlapping supporting reasons) resulted in students being able to form a greater number of cross-textual connections, overall, and more evidentiary and thematic connections, in particular, as compared to the most discrepant text condition (i.e., when texts had conflicting main ideas and presented distinct supporting reasons). Discrepant main ideas across texts were found to increase students’ contextual connection formation.

摘要

当使用互联网来学习复杂的主题或问题时，学生经常会遇到相辅相成且相互矛盾的信息。在确定学生对多个冲突文本的推理方式上存在差异的先前工作的基础上，我们研究了系统地设计为以多种方式变化的学生的联系形成和概括性概念化文本。我们研究学生的人脉关系形成和文本的概括概念化，引入一致或矛盾的主要思想，并辅以相互重叠或不同的支持原因。我们调查学生在跨文本形成三种类型的联系的程度：证据（即证实跨文本的特定信息），主题（即联系主要思想）和上下文（即比较文本的元功能，例如作者）。此外，我们分析学生如何以各种方式总结性描述彼此相关的文本。一般而言，反映跨文本一致性程度最高的文本条件（即，包含一致主旨且呈现重叠支持理由的文本）使学生能够在总体上和整体上形成更多数量的跨文本联系。与最不一致的文本条件相比（尤其是在文本具有主要思想冲突且呈现出明显的支持原因的情况下），尤其是在证据和主题方面的联系更多。发现跨文本的主要思想观点会增加学生的情境联系形成。