Impact of prior knowledge and teaching strategies on learning by teaching

We investigate cognitive factors that are predictive of learning gains when students learn to solve equations by teaching a synthetic peer, called SimStudent. Previous empirical studies showed that prior knowledge is strongly predictive of post-test scores. However, in a recent study in the Philippines that replicated our previous study in the USA, there were students with low priorknowledge who tutored their SimStudent better than other equally low prior students. In this paper, we analyze both process data (tutoring interactions) and outcome data (test scores) to understand what makes learning by teaching more effective. The results imply a presence of individual behavioral differences beyond the difference in the prior knowledge that might have affected SimStudent’s learning, which in turn had non-trivial influence on tutor learning