Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
6-2026
Abstract
Generating good questions is central to scientific inquiry. How can we improve this skill in classrooms? This field experiment showed that teaching others enhances students’ ability to generate higher-order research questions that create new knowledge. Whereas learning-by-teaching often involves delivering face-to-face or video-recorded lectures, we tested its efficient implementation via writing a verbatim (i.e., word-for-word) teaching script, exactly as how one would orate a lecture. In a research and statistical methods course, 199 undergraduates studied statistical concepts by writing verbatim teaching scripts or study notes. One month later, students’ long-term learning was assessed on a high-stakes test, whereby they explained the concepts, applied them to design a study to test a given hypothesis, and generated create-level research questions about the concepts. Writing teaching scripts enhanced students’ research question generation and concept application more than writing study notes. The teaching advantage for these higher-order outcomes held although both techniques produced comparably high basic understanding when students explained the concepts at test. Further, students displayed greater generative processing, metacognitive monitoring, and social presence when writing teaching scripts than study notes. Learning-by-teaching can be leveraged in an efficient and inexpensive way via writing verbatim teaching scripts to improve meaningful, durable learning in classrooms.
Keywords
Explaining, Generative learning, Learning by teaching, Question generation, Field experiment
Discipline
Educational Methods | Social Psychology
Research Areas
Psychology
Publication
Journal of Experimental Education
Volume
94
Issue
3
First Page
399
Last Page
419
ISSN
0022-0973
Identifier
10.1080/00220973.2024.2364625
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
Citation
LIM, Stephen Wee Hun, WONG, Sarah Shi Hui, & VISESSUVANAPOOM, Piyawan.(2026). Durable benefits of learning-by-teaching for research question generation performance: A field experiment. Journal of Experimental Education, 94(3), 399-419.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4274
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.2024.2364625