Many studies have reported that teaching scientific rules does not always promote problem-solving. They have proposed that it is because learners have misrules that contradict the scientific rule (the “misrule theory”) or that it is because learners underestimate the generalizability of the rule due to their notions about exceptions (the “rule misinterpretation theory”). We investigated the validity of these theories by a method, called a “guided thinking approach,” that guided learners to use relevant information as problem-solving hints and analyzed the learners’ responses. We asked university students to learn the rule about seed plants from a text and solve the problems. Thereafter, we conducted interview surveys using the guided thinking approach. Analysis of the students’ responses showed that only one case among the 14 cases that failed in the initial resolution was interpretable by the conventional theory. Thirteen other cases finally achieved the correct solution. They were inconsistent with the above theories. These results suggest that the problem may be that learners do not actively use rules to solve problems.

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The purpose of this study was to change the preconception that Japanese history is a subject rote learning and instead promote the use of logical thinking. We developed learning strategies to implement logical thinking. In May, 2019, we conducted our study, which included 191 first-year private junior high-school students. Initially, all the junior high school students regarded Japanese history as a memorization subject, and 57.1% of them answered incorrectly to the questions that could not be answered by simple rote learning. This was reduced to 22% after encouraging the application of logical thinking, suggesting that simple rote memorization alone cannot enable correct answers to questions. In the post-questionnaire, many students acknowledged the importance of logical thinking, suggesting that the preconception that “Japanese history is a subject requiring memorization” had been changed. However, there were many responses that relied on memorized knowledge instead of using logical thinking based on the materials in the applied post-task, suggesting that the students’ difficulty to successfully adopt logical thinking remains. Consequently, the students’ challenge to successfully adopt logical thinking still remains.

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[in Japanese]

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