Empirical investigation on self fading as adaptive behavior of hint seeking

Abstract

We investigated whether students behave adaptively in hint-seeking from the viewpoint of self-fading. To let students effectively learn, scaffolding should be eliminated gradually with the progress of learning. We define self-fading as fading behavior lowing the levels of support by students themselves. We investigated the relation between such metacognitive behavior and learning effects through two experiments in a laboratory setting and in actual class activities. The results showed that our participants successfully faded help supports, and also confirmed that those who lowered the levels of support and learned with their own efforts gained larger learning effects. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.