Selfexplanation

Self-explanation is a cognitive strategy in which a learner generates explanations for the content being learned or for the steps taken during problem solving. The goal is to integrate new information with prior knowledge to construct a coherent understanding.

Self-explanation has been studied extensively in educational psychology since the late 20th century. Across domains such as mathematics, science, and language arts, prompting learners to articulate their thinking improves understanding, problem solving, and long-term retention.

Mechanisms: It promotes elaboration, inference generation, and monitoring of understanding. Explaining why steps follow from principles helps integrate new information into existing knowledge, reveal gaps, and support transfer to new problems.

Educational use: Teachers prompt self-explanation during tasks with questions like “What does this step do?”, “Why is this principle applicable?”, and “How does this relate to what you know?” Explanations may be spoken, written, or recorded as think-alouds.

Benefits and limitations: Self-explanation often improves accuracy, retention, and transfer, especially with explicit prompts and guided practice. Gains depend on prior knowledge, task structure, and explanation quality. If explanations are superficial or cognitive load is high, benefits may be limited.

Relation to metacognition: Self-explanation is a metacognitive strategy supporting self-regulated learning and knowledge construction. It is commonly used with feedback, peer explanations, or tutoring, and is most effective when prompts are clear and gradually released as learners gain expertise.