Research has demonstrated that oral explaining to a fictitious student improves learning. Whether these findings replicate, when students are writing explanations, and whether instructional explaining is more effective than other explaining strategies, such as self-explaining, is unclear. In two experiments, we compared written instructional explaining to written self-explaining, and also included written retrieval and a baseline control condition. In Experiment 1 (N = 147, between-participants-design, laboratory experiment), we obtained no effect of explaining. In Experiment 2 (N = 50, within-participants-design, field-experiment), only self-explaining was more effective than our control conditions for attaining transfer. Self-explaining was more effective than instructional explaining. A cumulating meta-analysis on students’ learning revealed a small effect of instructional explaining on conceptual knowledge (g = 0.22), which was moderated by the modality of explaining (oral explaining > written explaining). These findings indicate that students who write explanations are better off self-explaining than explaining to a fictitious student.

研究表明，对虚拟学生进行口头解释可以改善学习。目前尚不清楚这些发现是否重复，何时学生编写解释，以及指导性解释是否比其他解释策略（例如自我解释）更有效。在两个实验中，我们将书面说明性解释与书面自我解释进行了比较，还包括书面检索和基线控制条件。在实验1（N  = 147，参与者之间的设计，实验室实验）中，我们没有获得解释的效果。在实验2（N = 50（参加者内部设计，现场实验），只有自我解释比我们的控制条件更有效。自我解释比指导性解释更有效。对学生学习的累积荟萃分析显示，教学解释对概念知识的影响很小（g  = 0.22），这被解释的方式（口头解释>书面解释）所缓和。这些发现表明，写解释的学生比对虚构的学生进行解释要容易得多。