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Journal Article•DOI•

Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching

Paul A. Kirschner1, John Sweller2, Richard E. Clark3•
Open University1, University of New South Wales2, University of Southern California3
01 Jun 2006-Educational Psychologist (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.)-Vol. 41, Iss: 2, pp 75-86
TL;DR: In this article, the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert-novice differences, and cognitive load, and it is shown that the advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide "internal" guidance.
Abstract: Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert–novice differences, and cognitive load. Although unguided or minimally guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing, the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half-century that consistently indicate that minimally guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process. The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide "internal" guidance. Recent developments in instructional research and instructional design models that support guidance during instruction are briefly described.

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KIRSCHNER, SWELLER, CLARKMINIMAL GUIDANCE

  • The point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half-century that consistently indicate that minimally guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process.
  • Recent developments in instructional research and instructional design models that support guidance during instruction are briefly described.
  • Disputes about the impact of instructional guidance during teaching have been ongoing for at least the past half-century (Ausubel, 1964; Craig, 1956; Mayer, 2004; Shulman & Keisler, 1966).
  • On the other side are those suggesting that novice learners should be provided with direct instructional guidance on the concepts and procedures required by a particular discipline and should not be left to discover those pro- cedures by themselves (e.g., Cronbach & Snow, 1977; Klahr & Nigam, 2004; Mayer, 2004; Shulman & Keisler, 1966; Sweller, 2003).

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Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not
Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist,
Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-
Based teaching
Citation for published version (APA):
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. (2016). Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An
Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based teaching.
Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1
DOI:
10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1
Document status and date:
Published: 09/06/2016
Document Version:
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the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the
final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website.
• The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review.
• The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.
Link to publication
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KIRSCHNER, SWELLER, CLARKMINIMAL GUIDANCE
Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not
Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist,
Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and
Inquiry-Based Teaching
Paul A. Kirschner
Educational Technology Expertise Center
Open University of the Netherlands
Research Centre Learning in Interaction
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
John Sweller
School of Education
University of New South Wales
Richard E. Clark
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge
of human cognitive architecture, expert–novice differences, and cognitive load. Although un-
guided or minimally guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appeal-
ing, the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human
cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half-century that con
-
sistently indicate that minimally guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than in
-
structional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning pro
-
cess. The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high
prior knowledge to provide “internal” guidance. Recent developments in instructional research
and instructional design models that support guidance during instruction are briefly described.
Disputes about the impact of instructional guidance during
teaching have been ongoing for at least the past half-century
(Ausubel, 1964; Craig, 1956; Mayer, 2004; Shulman &
Keisler, 1966). On one side of this argument are those advo
-
cating the hypothesis that people learn best in an unguided or
minimally guided environment, generally defined as one in
which learners, rather than being presented with essential in
-
formation, must discover or construct essential information
for themselves (e.g., Bruner, 1961; Papert, 1980; Steffe &
Gale, 1995). On the other side are those suggesting that nov
-
ice learners should be provided with direct instructional
guidance on the concepts and procedures required by a par
-
ticular discipline and should not be left to discover those pro
-
cedures by themselves (e.g., Cronbach & Snow, 1977; Klahr
& Nigam, 2004; Mayer, 2004; Shulman & Keisler, 1966;
Sweller, 2003). Direct instructional guidance is defined as
providing information that fully explains the concepts and
procedures that students are required to learn as well as learn
-
ing strategy support that is compatible with human cognitive
architecture. Learning, in turn, is defined as a change in
long-term memory.
The minimally guided approach has been called by vari
-
ous names including discovery learning (Anthony, 1973;
Bruner, 1961); problem-based learning (PBL; Barrows &
Tamblyn, 1980; Schmidt, 1983), inquiry learning (Papert,
1980; Rutherford, 1964), experiential learning (Boud,
Keogh, & Walker, 1985; Kolb & Fry, 1975), and
constructivist learning (Jonassen, 1991; Steffe & Gale,
1995). Examples of applications of these differently named
but essentially pedagogically equivalent approaches include
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 41(2), 75–86
Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
CorrespondenceshouldbeaddressedtoPaulA.Kirschner,ResearchCen
-
tre Learning in Interaction, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, P.O. Box
80140,3508TC,Utrecht,TheNetherlands.E-mail:p.a.kirschner@fss.uu.nl
Citations
More filters
Book•
经验与教育 = Experience and education

[...]

John Dewey, 玉珏 王, 春来 朱
01 Jan 2012
Abstract: Experience and Educationis the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education(Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analysing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

10,294 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Scaffolding and Achievement in Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning: A Response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006)

[...]

Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver1, Ravit Golan Duncan1, Clark A. Chinn1•
Rutgers University1
05 Dec 2007-Educational Psychologist
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that problem-based learning (PBL) and inquiry learning (IL) are powerful and effective models of learning and that they employ scaffolding extensively, thereby reducing the cognitive load and allowing students to learn in complex domains.
Abstract: Many innovative approaches to education such as problem-based learning (PBL) and inquiry learning (IL) situate learning in problem-solving or investigations of complex phenomena. Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) grouped these approaches together with unguided discovery learning. However, the problem with their line of argument is that IL and PBL approaches are highly scaffolded. In this article, we first demonstrate that Kirschner et al. have mistakenly conflated PBL and IL with discovery learning. We then present evidence demonstrating that PBL and IL are powerful and effective models of learning. Far from being contrary to many of the principles of guided learning that Kirschner et al. discussed, both PBL and IL employ scaffolding extensively thereby reducing the cognitive load and allowing students to learn in complex domains. Moreover, these approaches to learning address important goals of education that include content knowledge, epistemic practices, and soft skills such as collaboration and sel...

2,040 citations

Book•
Cognitive Load Theory

[...]

John Sweller1•
University of New South Wales1
30 Mar 2011
TL;DR: Cognitive load theory uses evolutionary theory to consider human cognitive architecture and uses that architecture to devise novel, instructional procedures to generate instructional procedures, summarized in this chapter.
Abstract: Kirschner, P. A., Kirschner, F. C., & Paas, F. (2009). Cognitive load theory. In E. M. Anderman & L. H. Anderman (Eds.). Psychology of classroom learning: An encyclopedia, Volume 1, a-j (pp. 205-209). Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference.

1,878 citations

Book•
Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century

[...]

James W. Pellegrino, Margaret L. Hilton
18 Dec 2012
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify caracteristicas relacionadas with the aprendizaje of these habilidades, that include desarrollo profesional docente, curriculo, evaluacion, programas extraescolares and extraescolate, and centros de aprendíe informal como exhibiciones and museos.
Abstract: Este libro describe un importante conjunto de habilidades clave que aumentan el aprendizaje mas profundo, la preparacion para la universidad y la carrera, el aprendizaje centrado en el estudiante y el pensamiento de orden superior. Estas etiquetas incluyen habilidades cognitivas y no cognitivas, como pensamiento critico, resolucion de problemas, colaboracion, comunicacion efectiva, motivacion, persistencia y aprender a aprender. Las habilidades del siglo XXI tambien incluyen creatividad, innovacion y etica que son importantes para el exito posterior y pueden desarrollarse en entornos de aprendizaje formales o informales. Este informe tambien describe como estas habilidades se relacionan entre si y con las habilidades y contenidos academicos mas tradicionales en las disciplinas clave de lectura, matematicas y ciencias. Educacion para la vida y el trabajo: Desarrollar conocimientos y habilidades transferibles en el siglo XXI resume los hallazgos de la investigacion que investiga la importancia de tales habilidades para el exito en la educacion, el trabajo y otras areas de responsabilidad adulta y que demuestra la importancia de desarrollar estas habilidades. en la educacion K-16. En este informe, se identifican caracteristicas relacionadas con el aprendizaje de estas habilidades, que incluyen desarrollo profesional docente, curriculo, evaluacion, programas extraescolares y extraescolares y centros de aprendizaje informal como exhibiciones y museos.

1,489 citations

Book•
First Principles of Instruction

[...]

M. David Merrill1•
Utah State University1
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: For the past several years the author has been reviewing instructional design theories in an attempt to identify prescriptive principles that are common to the various theries as mentioned in this paper, and a preliminary report of the principles that have been identified by this search is presented in this paper.
Abstract: For the past several years the author has been reviewing instructional design theories in an attempt to identify prescriptive principles that are common to the various theries. This paper is a preliminary report of the principles that have been identified by this search. Five first principles are elaborated: (a) Learning is promoted when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems. (b) Learning is promoted when existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge. (c) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner. (d) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is applied by the learner. (e) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is integrated into the learner's world. Representative instructional design theories are briefly examined to illustrate how they include these principles. These include: Star Legacy by the Vanderbilt Learning Technology Center, 4-Mat by McCarthy, instructional episodes by Andre, multiple approaches to understanding by Gardner, collaborative problem solving by Nelson, constructivist learning environments by Jonassen, and learning by doing by Schank. It is concluded that, although they use a wide variety of terms, these theories and models do include fundamentally similar principles.

1,333 citations

References
More filters
Book•
Experiential Learning : Experience as the Source of Learning and Development

[...]

David A. Kolb
01 Oct 1983

27,104 citations

"Why Minimal Guidance During Instruc..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Attempts to validate experiential learning and learning styles (Kolb, 1971, 1984, 1999) appear not to have been completely successful....

    [...]

  • ...Attempts to validate experiential learning and learning styles ( Kolb, 1971, 1984, 1999 ) appear not to have been completely successful....

    [...]

Book•
The magical number seven plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information

[...]

George A. Miller1•
Harvard University1
01 Jan 1956
TL;DR: The theory provides us with a yardstick for calibrating the authors' stimulus materials and for measuring the performance of their subjects, and the concepts and measures provided by the theory provide a quantitative way of getting at some of these questions.
Abstract: First, the span of absolute judgment and the span of immediate memory impose severe limitations on the amount of information that we are able to receive, process, and remember. By organizing the stimulus input simultaneously into several dimensions and successively into a sequence or chunks, we manage to break (or at least stretch) this informational bottleneck. Second, the process of recoding is a very important one in human psychology and deserves much more explicit attention than it has received. In particular, the kind of linguistic recoding that people do seems to me to be the very lifeblood of the thought processes. Recoding procedures are a constant concern to clinicians, social psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists and yet, probably because recoding is less accessible to experimental manipulation than nonsense syllables or T mazes, the traditional experimental psychologist has contributed little or nothing to their analysis. Nevertheless, experimental techniques can be used, methods of recoding can be specified, behavioral indicants can be found. And I anticipate that we will find a very orderly set of relations describing what now seems an uncharted wilderness of individual differences. Third, the concepts and measures provided by the theory of information provide a quantitative way of getting at some of these questions. The theory provides us with a yardstick for calibrating our stimulus materials and for measuring the performance of our subjects. In the interests of communication I have suppressed the technical details of information measurement and have tried to express the ideas in more familiar terms; I hope this paraphrase will not lead you to think they are not useful in research. Informational concepts have already proved valuable in the study of discrimination and of language; they promise a great deal in the study of learning and memory; and it has even been proposed that they can be useful in the study of concept formation. A lot of questions that seemed fruitless twenty or thirty years ago may now be worth another look. In fact, I feel that my story here must stop just as it begins to get really interesting. And finally, what about the magical number seven? What about the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the seven ages of man, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week? What about the seven-point rating scale, the seven categories for absolute judgment, the seven objects in the span of attention, and the seven digits in the span of immediate memory? For the present I propose to withhold judgment. Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it. But I suspect that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence.

16,902 citations

"Why Minimal Guidance During Instruc..." refers background in this paper

  • ...We have known at least since Peterson and Peterson (1959) that almost all information stored in working memory and not rehearsed is lost within 30 sec and have known at least since Miller (1956) that the capacity of working memory is limited to only a very small number of elements....

    [...]

  • ..., see Moreno, 2004; Tuovinen & Sweller, 1999). Hardiman, Pollatsek, and Weil (1986) and Brown and Campione (1994) noted that when students learn science in classrooms with pure-discovery methods and minimal feedback, they often become lost, frustrated, and their confusion can lead to misconceptions....

    [...]

Journal Article•DOI•
Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching

[...]

Lee S. Shulman1•
Stanford University1
01 Feb 1986-Educational Researcher
TL;DR: In this paper, Shulman observa la historia de evaluaciones docentes, noting that the evaluación docente parecia preocuparse tanto por los conocimientos, como el siglo anterior se preoccupaba por la pedagogia.
Abstract: Este articulo fue un discurso presidencial en la reunion de America Educational Research Association de Chicago el ano 1985. -- Curioso sobre el por que el publico a menudo tiene una baja opinion sobre el conocimiento de los profesores, Shulman observa la historia de evaluaciones docentes. En la segunda mitad del 1800, las evaluaciones para quienes deseaban ensenar se basaban casi por completo en contenido. Para el ano en que el autor escribe el articulo, en 1985, la evaluacion era completamente distinta. En lugar de enfocarse en contenido, se enfocaba en topicos como planificacion de clases, sensibilizacion cultural, y otros aspectos de la conducta docente. Mientras los topicos usualmente tenian raices en la investigacion, claramente no representan el amplio espectro de habilidades y conocimientos que un docente necesita para ser efectivo. Mas especificamente, para los anos 80', la evaluacion docente parecia preocuparse tanto por los conocimientos, como el siglo anterior se preocupaba por la pedagogia.

15,740 citations

Book•
Experience and Education

[...]

John Dewey1•
Columbia University1
01 Jan 1938
TL;DR: The best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century, is Experience and Education as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Experience and Educationis the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education(Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analysing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

12,403 citations

Book•
Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas

[...]

Seymour Papert
01 Jan 1980
TL;DR: The gears of my childhood as discussed by the authors were a source of inspiration for many of the ideas we use in our own work, such as the notion of assimilation of knowledge into a new model.
Abstract: The Gears of My Childhood Before I was two years old I had developed an intense involvement with automobiles. The names of car parts made up a very substantial portion of my vocabulary: I was particularly proud of knowing about the parts of the transmission system, the gearbox, and most especially the differential. It was, of course, many years later before I understood how gears work; but once I did, playing with gears became a favorite pastime. I loved rotating circular objects against one another in gearlike motions and, naturally, my first "erector set" project was a crude gear system. I became adept at turning wheels in my head and at making chains of cause and effect: "This one turns this way so that must turn that way so . . . " I found particular pleasure in such systems as the differential gear, which does not follow a simple linear chain of causality since the motion in the transmission shaft can be distributed in many different ways to the two wheels depending on what resistance they encounter. I remember quite vividly my excitement at discovering that a system could be lawful and completely comprehensible without being rigidly deterministic. I believe that working with differentials did more for my mathematical development than anything I was taught in elementary school. Gears, serving as models, carried many otherwise abstract ideas into my head. I clearly remember two examples from school math. I saw multiplication tables as gears, and my first brush with equations in two variables (e.g., 3x + 4y = 10) immediately evoked the differential. By the time I had made a mental gear model of the relation between x and y, figuring how many teeth each gear needed, the equation had become a comfortable friend. Many years later when I read Piaget this incident served me as a model for his notion of assimilation, except I was immediately struck by the fact that his discussion does not do full justice to his own idea. He talks almost entirely about cognitive aspects of assimilation. But there is also an affective component. Assimilating equations to gears certainly is a powerful way to bring old knowledge to bear on a new object. But it does more as well. I am sure that such assimilations helped to endow mathematics, for me, with a positive affective tone that can be traced back to my infantile experiences with cars. I believe Piaget really agrees. As I came to know him personally I understood that his neglect of the affective comes more from a modest sense that little is known about it than from an arrogant sense of its irrelevance. But let me return to my childhood. One day I was surprised to discover that some adults---even most adults---did not understand or even care about the magic of the gears. I no longer think much about gears, but I have never turned away from the questions that started with that discovery: How could what was so simple for me be incomprehensible to other people? My proud father suggested "being clever" as an explanation. But I was painfully aware that some people who could not understand the differential could easily do things I found much more difficult. Slowly I began to formulate what I still consider the fundamental fact about learning: Anything is easy if you can assimilate it to your collection of models. If you can't, anything can be painfully difficult. Here too I was developing a way of thinking that would be resonant with Piaget's. The understanding of learning must be genetic. It must refer to the genesis of knowledge. What an individual can learn, and how he learns it, depends on what models he has available. This raises, recursively, the question of how he learned these models. Thus the "laws of learning" must be about how intellectual structures grow out of one another and about how, in the process, they acquire both logical and emotional form. This book is an exercise in an applied genetic epistemology expanded beyond Piaget's cognitive emphasis to include a concern with the affective. It develops a new perspective for education research focused on creating the conditions under which intellectual models will take root. For the last two decades this is what I have been trying to do. And in doing so I find myself frequently reminded of several aspects of my encounter with the differential gear. First, I remember that no one told me to learn about differential gears. Second, I remember that there was feeling, love, as well as understanding in my relationship with gears. Third, I remember that my first encounter with them was in my second year. If any "scientific" educational psychologist had tried to "measure" the effects of this encounter, he would probably have failed. It had profound consequences but, I conjecture, only very many years later. A "pre- and post-" test at age two would have missed them. Piaget's work gave me a new framework for looking at the gears of my childhood. The gear can be used to illustrate many powerful "advanced" mathematical ideas, such as groups or relative motion. But it does more than this. As well as connecting with the formal knowledge of mathematics, it also connects with the "body knowledge," the sensorimotor schemata of a child. You can be the gear, you can understand how it turns by projecting yourself into its place and turning with it. It is this double relationship---both abstract and sensory---that gives the gear the power to carry powerful mathematics into the mind. In a terminology I shall develop in later chapters, the gear acts here as a transitional object. A modern-day Montessori might propose, if convinced by my story, to create a gear set for children. Thus every child might have the experience I had. But to hope for this would be to miss the essence of the story. I fell in love with the gears. This is something that cannot be reduced to purely "cognitive" terms. Something very personal happened, and one cannot assume that it would be repeated for other children in exactly the same form. My thesis could be summarized as: What the gears cannot do the computer might. The computer is the Proteus of machines. Its essence is its universality, its power to simulate. Because it can take on a thousand forms and can serve a thousand functions, it can appeal to a thousand tastes. This book is the result of my own attempts over the past decade to turn computers into instruments flexible enough so that many children can each create for themselves something like what the gears were for me.

6,780 citations

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