#471: When Exploration Precedes Instruction: The Roles of Curiosity and Metacognition in Productive Failure

Exploratory learning—solving problems before receiving instruction—can promote increased conceptual understanding by encouraging learners to generate and test ideas. The present study investigated how exploratory learning influences curiosity, metacognitive engagement, and conceptual understanding. Undergraduate participants (N = 149) learned about standard deviation in either an explore-first or instruct-first condition. Explore-first learners demonstrated higher inference-based understanding and reported greater monitoring than instruct-first learners. Curiosity did not differ by condition but moderated the relationship between instruction order and monitoring, indicating that curiosity amplifies metacognitive engagement when present. However, a moderated mediation analysis did not support the hypothesized sequential pathway from exploration to monitoring to debugging to understanding. These findings suggest that curiosity and metacognition jointly—but independently—contribute to the benefits of exploration. Implications for instructional design highlight the value of incorporating exploratory tasks that elicit productive uncertainty while supporting learners’ curiosity and self-regulation.