This study evaluated the effectiveness of promoting relational thinking, using “elaborative interrogation” techniques, to facilitate the content acquisition of elementary school students with mild disabilities. Three conditions were used: control, experimenter-provided explanation, and student-generated explanation. Results indicated that both explanation groups significantly outperformed the control group on recall of facts, as well as explanations. Students coached in relational thinking statistically outperformed those in the control condition and descriptively outperformed students in the experimenter-provided explanation condition on immediate recall. Students in the student-generated explanation condition statistically outperformed both groups in delayed factual recall.
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