2023 Volume 47 Issue 2 Pages 271-279
In this study, the teacher conducted an activity in which the students created essay questions in history class as an exam preparer and examined its effect on their conceptions of learning, learning strategies, and motivation. 8th grade students in private high school in Tokyo made essay questions by themselves. In the first semester, the teacher taught types of essay questions in history learning and all questions students created were shared in the class with the teacher’s feedback comments. These interventions, however, seemed to be insufficient to make the activity work well. In the second semester, the teacher added the two interventions. At first, he picked up some good essay questions and made all students to solve them. Then, he asked students who made those questions to explain the intention of creating such questions and effective learning strategies for solving them. As a result, unfavorable conceptions of learning, such as emphasizing rote memorizing and outcomes, significantly decreased, whereas the use of effective learning strategy, such as self-explanation strategy, increased. The overall effect of the interventions and the issues left in this study was discussed at the end of the paper.
