When learning with abstract and scientific multiple external representations (MERs), low prior knowledge learners are said to have difficulties in using these MERs to achieve conceptual understanding. Yet little is known about what these limitations precisely entail. In order to understand this, we presented 101 learners with low prior knowledge…

Identifying effective instructional approaches that stimulate students' critical thinking (CT) has been the focus of a large body of empirical research. However, there is little agreement on the instructional principles and procedures that are theoretically sound and empirically valid to developing both domain-specific and domain-general CT…