Abstract: This study made a further investigation on the effects of two types of learning support on simulation based scientific discovery learning interpretative support (IS) that helped learners with knowledge access and the generation of integrative understanding, experimental support (ES) that scaffolded learners in the systematic and logical design of experiments. In result, (1) learners' reasoning ability had significant effect on the posttest of principle knowledge and intuitive understanding. (2) IS had notable effect on the test of principle knowledge and intuitive understanding. (3) There was a clear interaction between ES and reasoning ability on the test of principle knowledge, indicating that ES had positive influence to low reasoning ability learners, while it had negative effect among the middle ability group. Significant positive effect was observed for ES on the quality of the experiments designed by learners during learning processes. These results imply that the meaningfulness and systematic logicality of discovery processes have prominent effect to simulation based discovery learning; hence learning supports should be designed towards the two spheres.

Key words: scientific discovery learning, simulation based learning, learning support, discovery learning