Manu Kapur

Education University of Hong Kong, Psychological Studies, Faculty Member

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I am currently a Professor of Psychological Studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIED). Prior to joining the HKIED, I was the Head of the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Department, as well as the Head of the Learning Sciences Lab (LSL) at the National Institute of Education (NIE) of Singapore. For more information, visit www.manukapur.com.

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Papers by Manu Kapur

Mathematical Problem Solving - Yearbook 2009, Association of Mathematics Educators

World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. eBooks, 2009

Comparing the effectiveness of preparatory activities that help undergraduate students learn from instruction

Learning and Instruction

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Micro productive failure and the acquisition of algebraic procedural knowledge

Instructional Science

Productive failure has shown positive effects on conceptual and transfer measures, but no clear e... more Productive failure has shown positive effects on conceptual and transfer measures, but no clear effects on procedural measures. It is therefore an open question whether, and to what extent, productive failure methods may be used to enhance the learning of procedural skills. A typical productive failure study focuses on a single, complex concept; in contrast, procedural knowledge generally consists of a series of less-complex procedural steps. In this study, failure occasions were adapted to specifically fit procedural knowledge by introducing procedural problems prior to the formal instruction of relevant principles. These procedural problems offered brief but multiple occasions for failure, which we call micro productive failure. A total of 85 sixth-graders were introduced to algebraic expression simplification by providing problem-solving prior to instruction (PS-I condition), compared to providing problem-solving after instruction (I-PS condition). Findings reveal a stable effect...

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Exploring the efficacy of practice before instruction

Impact of Explicit Failure and Success-driven Preparatory Activities on Learning

Differential benefits of explicit failure-driven and success-driven scaffolding in problem-solving prior to instruction

Journal of Educational Psychology, 2020

Unscaffolded problem-solving before receiving instruction can give students opportunities to ente... more Unscaffolded problem-solving before receiving instruction can give students opportunities to entertain their exploratory hypotheses at the expense of experiencing initial failures. Prior literature has argued for the efficacy of such preparatory activities in preparing students to learn from instruction. Despite growing understanding of the underlying cognitive mechanisms, the pedagogical value of success or failure in initial problem-solving attempts is still unclear. We do not know yet whether some ways of succeeding or failing are more efficacious than others. We report empirical evidence from a classroom intervention (N = 221), where we designed scaffolds to explicitly push student problem-solving toward success via structuring, but also toward failure via problematizing. Our rationale for explicit failure scaffolding was rooted in facilitating problem-space exploration. We subsequently compared the differential preparatory effects of success-driven and failure-driven problem-solving on learning from follow-up instruction. Results suggested that failure-driven scaffolding (nudging students to generate suboptimal solutions) and success-driven scaffolding (nudging students to generate optimal solutions by giving them heuristics with low specificity) had similar outcomes on posttest assessments of conceptual understanding. Students exposed to failure-driven scaffolding, however, demonstrated higher quality of constructive reasoning. These trends were more salient for the learning concept with greater difficulty

The Disappearing “Advantage of Abstract Examples in Learning Math”

Cognitive Science, 2020

When teaching a novel mathematical concept, should we present learners with abstract or concrete ... more When teaching a novel mathematical concept, should we present learners with abstract or concrete examples? In this experiment, we conduct a critical replication and extension of a well-known study that argued for the general advantage of abstract examples (Kaminski, Sloutsky, & Heckler, 2008a). We demonstrate that theoretically motivated yet minor modifications of the learning design put this argument in question. A key finding from this study is that participants who trained with improved concrete examples performed as well as, or better than, participants who trained with abstract examples. We argue that the previously reported "advantage of abstract examples" manifested not because abstract examples are advantageous in general, but because the concrete condition employed suboptimal examples.

Productive dissent in learning communities

Instructional Science, 2018

Community" has become a commonplace term in the learning sciences. Alongside this popularization ... more

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Mathematical Problem Solving

Mathematical Problem Solving, 2009

Mathematical Problem Solving in Singapore Schools Using Innovation Techniques to Generate NewA&qu... more Mathematical Problem Solving in Singapore Schools Using Innovation Techniques to Generate NewA" Problems, Mathematical Problems for the Secondary Classroom Mathematical Problem Posing in Singapore Primary Schools Integrating Open-Ended Problems in the Lower Secondary Mathematics Lesson Arousing Students' Curiosity and Mathematical Problem Solving Learning Through Productive Failure in Mathematical Problem Solving Tasks and Pedagogies that Facilitate Mathematical Problem Solving Note Taking as Deliberative Pedagogy: Scaffolding Problem Solving Learning Solving Mathematical Problems by Investigation Mathematical Modeling and Real Life Problem Solving Generative Activities in Singapore (GenSing): Pedagogy and Practice, What's Next?.

Productive dissent in learning communities

by Hillary Swanson, Dragan Trninic, and Manu Kapur

Instructional Science, 2018

" Community " has become a commonplace term in the learning sciences. Alongside this popularizati... more

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Examining Productive Failure, Productive Success, Unproductive Failure, and Unproductive Success in Learning

Learning and performance are not always commensurable. Conditions that maximize performance in th... more Learning and performance are not always commensurable. Conditions that maximize performance in the initial learning may not maximize learning in the longer term. I exploit this incommensurability to theoretically and empirically interrogate four possibilities for design: productive success, productive failure, unproductive success, and unproductive failure. Instead of only looking at extreme comparisons between discovery learning and direct instruction, an analysis of the four design possibilities suggests a vast design space in between the two extremes that may be more productive for learning than the extremes. I show that even though direct instruction can be conceived as a productive success compared to discovery learning, theoretical and empirical analyses suggests that it may well be an unproductive success compared with examples of productive failure and productive success. Implications for theory and the design of instruction are discussed.

Moving beyond the Pedagogy of Mathematics: Foregrounding Epistemological Concerns

Yearbook 2009, Association of Mathematics Educators, 2009

An Emergentist Account of Collective Cognition in Collaborative Problem Solving

As a first step toward an emergentist theory of collective cognition in collaborative problem sol... more As a first step toward an emergentist theory of collective cognition in collaborative problem solving, we present a proto-theoretical account of how one might conceive and model the intersubjective processes that organize collective cognition into one or another-convergent, divergent, or tensive-cognitive regime. To explore the sufficiency of our emergentist proposal we instantiate a minimalist model of intersubjective convergence and simulate the tuning of collective cognition using data from an empirical study of small-group, collaborative problem solving. Using the results of this empirical simulation, we test a number of preliminary hypotheses with regard to patterns of interaction, how those patterns affect a cognitive regime, and how that cognitive regime affects the efficacy of a problem-solving group.

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Calculating Expertise in Bioengineering Education

A previously hypothesized formula for calculating components of adaptive expertise (AE= 0.10F + 0... more A previously hypothesized formula for calculating components of adaptive expertise (AE= 0.10F + 0.40C + 0.50T, where F = Factual knowledge, C= Conceptual knowledge, and T = Transfer) was tested and the weighting adjusted based on analysis undertaken usin g 2-group MANOVA with the original study data. This data included measures of change along three facets of adaptive expertise: factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge and transfer. Analysis of the univariate effects reveals a significant difference in the transfer gain ( F=10.573, p= .004) but no significant difference on gains in conceptual knowledge ( F= .920, p= .349) or factual knowledge ( F= 3.104, p= .094). The linear combination that maximally separated the two groups was: 0.14F - 0.36C + 1.27T. The relative magnitudes of the weights share the same ordinal trend (F < C < T) as the original formula. The formula has theoretical underpinnings in How People Learn and attempts to describe points along the trajectory of novic...

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Workshop on Multiple Perspectives on Multiple Representations (MUPEMURE)

A large body of research has been concerned with learners' difficulties to detect and avoid m... more A large body of research has been concerned with learners' difficulties to detect and avoid misconceptions and to construct relations between multiple representations for building coherent mental representations of STEM topics. Moreover, much research has been invested in the questions of how to choose the optimal representation of knowledge to optimize cognitive load and how to design multiple representations for learning purposes. MUPEMURE builds on this work and takes it further by asking how learners can be facilitated to actively create and modify multiple representations and acquire multiple perspectives on science topics through specific, collaborative knowledge building activities. This new perspective on representations is addressing current online scenarios of knowledge construction, e.g., in social networking sites, where learners can create, upload, and discuss pictures and videos.

Problem solving as a complex, evolutionary activity

Proceedings of the 2005 conference on Computer support for collaborative learning learning 2005: the next 10 years! - CSCL '05, 2005

Viewed through the lens of complex systems science, one may conceptualize problemsolving interact... more Viewed through the lens of complex systems science, one may conceptualize problemsolving interactions among multiple actors, artifacts, tools, and environmental structures as goal-seeking adaptations, and problem-solving itself, as a complex adaptive activity. Theories of biological evolution point to an analogical equivalence between problem solving and evolutionary processes and, thus, introduce innovative methodological tools to the analysis of computer-supported, collaborative, problem-solving processes. In this paper, we present a methodological framework for characterizing and analyzing these processes. We describe four measures that characterize genetic evolution -number, function, fitness, and persistence -to characterize the process of collaborative problem solving, and instantiate them in a study of problem-solving interactions of collaborative groups in an online, synchronous environment. Issues relating to reliability, validity, usefulness, and limitations of the proposed methodology are discussed.

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Learning environments as emergent phenomena: Theoretical and methodological implications of complexity

A Complexity-Grounded Model for the Emergence of Convergence in CSCL Groups

Analyzing Interactions in CSCL, 2010

We advance a complexity− grounded, quantitative method for uncovering temporal patterns in CSCL d... more We advance a complexity− grounded, quantitative method for uncovering temporal patterns in CSCL discussions. We focus on convergence because understanding how complex group discussions converge presents a major challenge in CSCL research. From a complex systems perspective, convergence in group discussions is an emergent behavior arising from the transactional interactions between group members. Leveraging the concepts of emergent simplicity and emergent complexity (Bar-Yam 2003), a set of theoretically-sound ...

The assistance dilemma in CSCL

Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Computer supported collaborative learning - CSCL'09, 2009

... Paper 2: Delaying Structure: Productive Failure in Learning the Physics of Electricity using ... more

Enacting Teach Less, Learn More in Mathematics Classrooms: The Case of Productive Failure

Education Innovation Series, 2013

Mathematical Problem Solving - Yearbook 2009, Association of Mathematics Educators

World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. eBooks, 2009

Comparing the effectiveness of preparatory activities that help undergraduate students learn from instruction

Learning and Instruction

This page was generated automatically upon download from the ETH Zurich Research Collection. For ... more

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Micro productive failure and the acquisition of algebraic procedural knowledge