Luwel, K. 1, 2 , Foustana , A. 3 , Papadatos, Y. 3 & Verschaffel, L. 2
1 Centre of Educational Research and Development, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
2 Centre for Instructional Psychology and Technology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
3 Department of Special Education and Psychology, University of Athens, Greece
A test-intervention-test design was used to investigate the effect of intelligence and feedback on the four parameters of children's strategic competence (i.e., repertoire, frequency, efficiency and adaptivity). Children of three intelligence groups (i.e., low, medium and high intelligent children) had to determine different numerosities of coloured blocks that were presented in a square grid. They could solve this task by either using an addition strategy by which the coloured blocks in the grid were added, or an insightful subtraction strategy by which the number of empty squares was subtracted from the total number of squares in the grid. In Test Session 1 (TS1), we assessed children's initial strategic competence. In the intervention session (IS), children were provided with feedback on each trial. Half of the children from each group received outcome feedback (OFB), which informed them about the accuracy of their answer, whereas the other half received strategy feedback (SFB), informing them about the appropriateness of the selected strategy. In Test Session 2 (TS2), we tested for possible effects of the provision of feedback on each of the four parameters of strategic competence. The three intelligence groups exhibited large differences on all strategy parameters in TS1. In TS2, there was a strong decrease in these group differences for all parameters due to the provision of feedback. Furthermore, it was found that SFB was somewhat more beneficial than OFB, especially for the parameters involving strategy selection. We can conclude that high intelligent children show a greater strategy flexibility than less intelligent children but that the provision of feedback can lead to a dramatic improvement in the (flexible) use of strategies in less intelligent children.