Productive Failure (PF) is an instructional design that implements a problem-solving phase which aims at preparing students for learning from a subsequent instruction. PF has been shown to facilitate students’ conceptual knowledge acquisition in the mathematical domain. Collaboration has been described as a vital design component of PF, but studies that have investigated the role of collaboration in PF empirically so far, were not able to confirm the necessity of collaboration in PF. However, these studies have diverged significantly from prior traditional PF studies and design criteria. Therefore, the role of collaboration in PF remains unclear. In an experimental study that is based on the traditional design of PF, we compared a collaborative and an individual problem-solving setting. It was hypothesized that collaboration facilitates the beneficial preparatory mechanisms of the PF problem-solving phase: prior knowledge activation, awareness of knowledge gaps, and recognition of deep features. In a mediation analysis, the effects of collaborative and individual problem solving on conceptual knowledge acquisition as mediated through the preparatory mechanisms were tested. In contrast to the hypotheses, no mediations or differences between conditions were found. Thus, collaboration does not hold a major preparatory function in itself for the design of PF.

生产性失败 (PF) 是一种实施问题解决阶段的教学设计，旨在让学生为从后续教学中学习做好准备。PF 已被证明可以促进学生在数学领域的概念性知识获取。协作已被描述为 PF 的重要设计组成部分，但迄今为止，根据经验调查协作在 PF 中的作用的研究无法证实 PF 中协作的必要性。然而，这些研究与之前的传统 PF 研究和设计标准存在显着差异。因此，协作在 PF 中的作用仍不清楚。在基于 PF 传统设计的实验研究中，我们比较了协作和个人解决问题的设置。据推测，协作促进了 PF 问题解决阶段的有益准备机制：先验知识激活、知识差距意识和深层特征识别。在调解分析中，测试了通过准备机制调解的协作和个人问题解决对概念知识获取的影响。与假设相反，没有发现条件之间的调解或差异。因此，协作本身对 PF 的设计并不具有主要的准备功能。测试了通过准备机制调解的协作和个人问题解决对概念知识获取的影响。与假设相反，没有发现条件之间的调解或差异。因此，协作本身对 PF 的设计并不具有主要的准备功能。测试了通过准备机制调解的协作和个人问题解决对概念知识获取的影响。与假设相反，没有发现条件之间的调解或差异。因此，协作本身对 PF 的设计并不具有主要的准备功能。