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

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). 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.


Summary:
Kirschner, Sweller and Clark argue against inquiry and problem-based pedagogy because of how much it taxes the working memory of the novice learner. Epistemology and pedagogy are not equivalent, the authors argue, and this means that students cannot learn in the same manner as experts in the field. Rather, novice learners reap greater benefits with guided instruction and the explicit use of modeling. The aim of instruction should be to alter long-term memory, and when working memory is taxed too heavily through “pure” discovery-based learning, transfer into long-term memory does not occur. While the authors do acknowledge that constructivism is beneficial, they do not support the “instructional consequences suggested,” i.e., requiring students to discover solutions together (p.78). Instead, a greater reservoir of long-term memory can be tapped into when solving problems (p.77). Once learning is entrenched in long-term memory, learners can pull from this bank of information and skills. If PBL is contextualized, as in the medical field, it can be difficult for students to pull apart individual bits of information or skills from context of the task in which they learned it. The authors further suggest that “less able” learners need more guidance than apt learners, but may experience a more joyful (but less impactful) learning experience through discovery (p. 82).

Response:
The implications of this study are something that i will undoubtedly need to consider in my own classroom. As the authors share, “Any instructional procedure that ignores the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture is not likely to be effective” (p.76). I am becoming a stronger advocate of considering the development and capabilities of my students at certain ages. It is important to remember that adolescent brains are different than those of older adults. This must be take into consideration when considering instructional strategies. This means that if problems are introduced to students without any resources for how to solve, students are likely to become frustrated (p.79) and will flounder. This is, as the authors state, inefficient (Carlson, Lundy, & Schneider, 1992; Schauble, 1990 & p. 79). However, the authors repeatedly discuss their arguments against “pure” discovery learning. It seems that in my own practice, I can invite students to pose a question, but must give them guidance and provide models in order to avoid taxing their working memory. Otherwise, we won’t get anywhere. I  must remember that ““The aim of all instruction is to alter long-term memory. If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned. Any instructional recommendation that does not or cannot specify what has been changed in long-term memory, or that does not increase the efficiency with which relevant information is stored in or retrieved from long-term memory, is likely to be ineffective” (p.77).

When I ask students to co-design a project, it will be important to think about their prior learning experiences. We will have to consider what they have done as a group (in projects) and where they are as individuals when considering what is important to learn. Rather than make me think it is better to be “efficient” about learning, as these authors claim, I think that it will be important to incorporate much more meta-cognition. As one of my students shared, students want to learn how to learn. This means that we must consider how “full” their informational banks (in reading, writing, English, etc.) are when making decisions. They should be aware of how much they know and don’t know about a subject.

One thing to note is that the researchers refer mostly to science and math-related curriculum.

Quotes:

“Any instructional procedure that ignores the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture is not likely to be effective” (p.76).
“We are skillful in an area because our long-term memory contains huge amounts of information concerning the area. That information permits us to quickly recognize the characteristics of a situation and indicates to us, often unconsciously, what to do and when to do it”  (p. 76)

“The aim of all instruction is to alter long-term memory. If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned. Any instructional recommendation that does not or cannot specify what has been changed in long-term memory, or that does not increase the efficiency with which relevant information is stored in or retrieved from long-term memory, is likely to be ineffective” (p.77).

“Working memory has two well-known characteristics: When processing novel information, it is very limited in duration and capacity...”

“Any instructional theory that ignores the limits of working memory when dealing with novel information or ignores the disappearance of those limits when dealing with familiar information is unlikely to be effective... We know that problem-solving, which is central to one instructional procedure advocating minimal guidance, called inquiry-based instruction, places a huge burden on working memory (Sweller, 1988). The onus should surely be on those who support inquiry-based instruction to explain how such a procedure circumvents the well-known limits of working memory when dealing with novel information” (p. 77)

“The goal is to give learners specific guidance about how to cognitively manipulate information in ways that are consistent with a learning goal, and store the result in long-term memory” (p.77).

“The consequences of requiring novice learners to search for problem solutions using a limited working memory or the mechanisms by which unguided or minimally guided instruction might facilitate change in long-term memory appears to be routinely ignored” (p. 77).

“The constructivist description of learning is accurate, but the instructional consequences suggested by constructivists do not necessarily follow” ( p.78).

“...it may be a fundamental error to assume that the pedagogic content of the learning experience is identical to the methods and processes (i.e. the epistemology) of the discipline being studied and a mistake to assume that instruction should exclusively focus on methods and processes” (p. 78)

“... many curriculum developers, educational technologists, and educators seem to confuse the teaching of a discipline as inquiry (i.e., a curricular emphasis on the research processes within a science) with the teaching of the discipline by inquiry (i.e., using the research process of the discipline as a pedagogy or for learning)” (p. 78)

“The major fallacy of this rationale is that it makes no distinction between the behaviors and methods of a researcher who is an expert practicing a profession and those students who are new to the discipline and who are, thus, essentially novices” (p.79)

“Controlled experiments almost uniformly indicate that when dealing with novel information, learners should be explicitly shown what to do and how to do it” (p. 79)

The authors compare “pure discovery learning, defined as unguided, problem-based instruction” with “guided instruction,” citing Mayer’s 2004 study. Mayer concluded that guided was better.  (p.79)

“(Aulis, 2002) reported that the teacher whose students achieved all of their learning goals spent a great deal of time in instructional interactions with students by ‘simultaneously teaching content and scaffolding-relevant procedures...”

“...when students learn science in classrooms with pure-discovery methods and minimal feedback, they often become lost or frustrated...” (p.79)

“Others (e.g. Carlson, Lundy, & Schneider, 1992; Schauble, 1990) found that because false starts are common in such learning situations, unguided discovery becomes inefficient. Moreno (2004) concluded that there is a growing body of research that students learn more deeply from strongly guided learning than from discovery” (p. 79).  

“Direct instruction involving considerable guidance, including examples, resulted in vastly more learning than discovery” (p.79).

“Problem solving only becomes relatively effective when learners are sufficiently experienced so that studying a worked example, is for them, a redundant activity that increases working memory load compared to generating a known solution (Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler, & Sweller, 2001). This phenomenon is an example of expertise reversal effect (Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler, & Sweller, 2003). It emphasizes the importance of providing novices in an area with extensive guidance because they do not have sufficient knowledge in long-term memory t prevent unproductive problem-solving search. That guidance can only be relaxed with increased expertise as knowledge in long-term memory can take over from external guidance” (p. 80)

“[Clark (1989)] argued that failure to provide learning support for less experienced or less able students could actually produce a measurable loss in learning” (p.81)

“…[Clark (1982)] presented that when learners are asked to select between a more or less unguided version of the same course, less able learners who choose less guided approaches tend to like the experience even though they learn less from the experience” (p.82)

“... the epistemology of a discipline should not be confused with a pedagogy for teaching and learning it. The practice of a profession is not the same as learning to practice the profession” (p.83).

“Even for students with considerable prior knowledge, strong guidance while learning is most often found to be equally effective as unguided approaches” (p. 84).

“However, it may be an error to assume that the pedagogic content of the learning experience is identical to the methods and processes (i.e., the epistemology) of the discipline being studied  and a mistake to assume that instruction should exclusively focus on application” (p. 84)