Explanation prompts are an instructional aid which promotes understanding of the learned material by requiring the learner to elaborate on the step of a procedure he has just learned about.¹⁾

Two possible explanations were offered for this effect: first, claiming the enhanced learning result is caused merely by being exposed to additional information and that result would be the same if learners were offered teacher-provided explanations, and second, claiming the enhanced learning result is caused by the process of generating explanation from learner's own background knowledge. A recent research has supported the second hypothesis, suggesting that

• “the important variable for learning was the process of producing an explanation.”²⁾