
Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work (2006) [pdf] - eBombzor
http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf
======
solatic
After skimming the paper, I get the sense that there's this underlying
assumption that the goal of education is to get students to learn specific
facts, i.e. that a physics student should learn the formula that force equals
mass times acceleration.

While there is of course lots of value in ensuring that students can learn
specific facts and figures, the criticism (if I recall correctly) is that an
approach that dictates specificity of recall as the end goal is not an
approach that induces a lifelong love of learning. Most of the value in an
experiential-based approach is not limited to the specificity of facts learned
during the experiences, but in the cognitive linking of learning with the
dynamism of the experience, which encourages independent growth.

This leads back to the philosophical question of whether our school systems
should focus on graduating students who know specific knowledge (an approach
that leads to standardized testing), or students who have become independently
capable lifelong learners (a more holistic approach that tries to adapt to
students' individual strengths). Which approach better prepares students for
life after school, and equally important, which approach can prove to scale to
the levels required for public education?

~~~
hyperpape
I've increasingly come to value mastering the basics.[0]

A quote from Michael Nielsen in his great article Augmenting Long-Term Memory
([http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html](http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html))
puts it very well:

"Over the years, I've often helped people learn technical subjects such as
quantum mechanics. Over time you come to see patterns in how people get stuck.
One common pattern is that people think they're getting stuck on esoteric,
complex issues. But when you dig down it turns out they're having a hard time
with basic notation and terminology."

[0] I suspect individuals who learn things relatively easily may undervalue
that skill, because they typically were ahead in school.

~~~
sitkack
It isn't just the basics that need mastering, but all of it [1]

Adding knowledge to your own knowledge graph requires existing context,
without context, there is no place for new knowledge to attach.

Without master, eventually the new knowledge is simply remembered and not
fully understood. The knowledge front is a fixed distance from the last fully
mastered concept.

It is ok to go slow, who cares how fast shaky knowledge is consumed. You want
a building that will stand, not one that was built on time.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning)

------
sdrothrock
My knee-jerk instinct was to read this paper and take it as truth in the sense
that it's "debunking a popular belief," much like the "types of learning"
belief. However, this paper is 12 years old, so I was curious about whether
there had been any responses. I found this blog entry, which seems to be
relatively well-researched: [http://bdld.blogspot.com/2011/06/five-years-
later-review-of-...](http://bdld.blogspot.com/2011/06/five-years-later-review-
of-kirschner.html)

Especially of note is the section that states:

> The paper relies heavily on Cognitive Load Theory, yet we have to realize
> that it is still a theory rather than a law.

The author also quotes Joel Michael to unpack some of the difficulties in
studying educational methodology in general, which gave me some perspective.
It's something I've thought about a lot since many Japanese people mourn the
"yutori kyoiku"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutori_education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutori_education))
philosophy and I would often wonder which generations of students were a
result of that system and which were simply molded by other social pressures.

~~~
joe_the_user
I felt the paper's reliance on cognitive load theory was a bit problematic.

I'd have a different theory about the problems of "experiential learning" in a
class room setting. I've taught myself a lot on my own and so the idea of
exploratory learning always appealed to me. But all the experiential learning
circumstances I've been exposed to just felt like tricks. The teacher has
something in mind they want the student to learn, doesn't tell them exactly
what that is, and still expects them to learn to exactly that thing, rather
than some other things that the circumstances presented might teach the
student.

Actually, this relates to a lot of contexts. One example is those terrible job
interviews where the interviewer says something vague like "tell me about
yourself" but expects to learn specific thing. Another is Role Playing Games
(I'm an avid player of these). There's a classic problem where a dungeon
master expects their players to explore a city and make a specific discovery
with the clues given. That's typically much harder than the DM imagines and
experienced DMs learn to just set-up situation and let whatever the players
discover be what happens.

In general, I think a teacher or authority should say what they want in a
learning or examination process, if they want a specific thing. Because if
they don't say that, their idea of what a person would "naturally" discover
through exploration might actually be _wrong_ , indeed given the natural
variation in people's cognition, it probably is going to be wrong some large
portion of the time for many students.

~~~
singingfish
Cognitive load theory is fairly straightforward. People are able to handle 7±2
items in their working (short-term) memory at any one time. This means
reliably 5 items. Subtract one for standard normal distractors. Thus students
should not be expected to have to juggle more than 4 items at any one time.
The problem here is that what an item is for a student is different than what
an item is for an instructor. This is due to "chunking" (technical term from
psychology). For the instructor, discovering what an item is especially
difficult, as they may not be aware of what they had to learn to know what
they now know. Personally I'm all for minimal guidance, but it has to be
closely aligned to learning outcomes, and the instructor needs to understand
what an item means for the student, if they are to have a hope of introducing
less than four things at a time.

CLT is a solid theory with an extremely good basis. However understanding how
to apply it is hard given the knowledge difference between student and
instructor.

~~~
edtechdev
Cognitive load theory is unfalsifiable and has numerous conceptual and
methodological problems:
[https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/cognitive-load-
th...](https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/cognitive-load-theory-
failure/)

------
edtechdev
There have been numerous refutations of this opinion piece:
[https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/problem-based-
lea...](https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/problem-based-learning-
videogames-inquiry-learning-constructivism-pedagogical-agents-all-bad/)

As well as criticisms of their central underlying theory, cognitive load
theory, which is unfalsifiable:
[https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/cognitive-load-
th...](https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/cognitive-load-theory-
failure/)

And there is a wealth of counter-evidence on how constructivist inspired
teaching techniques (like active learning, inquiry learning, problem-based
learning) and technologies (like simulations, modeling tools, games) are more
effective for student learning:
[https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/evidence-for-
vari...](https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/evidence-for-various-
research-based-instructional-strategies-countering-critiques/)

Unfortunately, fans of the neo-traditional perspective presented in this
article plastered it all over Wikipedia 10 years ago, overwriting and ignoring
any contrary evidence and opinions, leading to today:
[https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/an-argument-
for-k...](https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/an-argument-for-knols-
over-wikipedia-and-citizendium/)

~~~
specialist
Excellent. Thank you.

Do you know of a handy (ELI5) layperson's explanation for state of the art
learning techniques?

As a parent of K-12 students, what should I be advocating?

As a life-long learner, what style of courseware should I seek out?

As a person who has taught & mentored 100s of peers how to code, informally,
what's are some strategies and techniques I should consider?

\--

A good friend teaches highschool physics using ASU's Modeling Instruction
Program. He claims terrific results.

[http://modeling.asu.edu](http://modeling.asu.edu)

As a layperson, I can't make heads or tails of the online resources. What he
describes, using the Socrates method in the classroom, sounds exciting. But I
don't know enough to act on that tidbit.

~~~
CuriouslyC
By far the best summary of current learning research is available at the Bjork
lab's website:
[https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/research/](https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/research/)

------
lysium
Interesting! The authors state their findings in the conclusions:

> After a half-century of advocacy associated with instruction using minimal
> guidance, it appears that there is no body of research supporting the
> technique. In so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it
> almost uniformly sup- ports direct, strong instructional guidance rather
> than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instructions of novice
> to intermediate learners.

I’m disappointed, though, that having a teacher who teaches physics by
standing and talking in front of a class appears to be optimal. I wish there
would be a more engaging alternative.

~~~
kurthr
I don't know what level of physics you're taking, but the lecture portion is
mostly motivational introduction (literally motivating particular types of
solutions or insights), but it's not where you learn the details of models or
techniques for solution. That is done in some combination of reading the text
(before class), previous or concurrent math classes (algebra, calculus,
analysis, linear algebra, ODE, complex analysis, PDE, abstract algebra each go
really well with particular topics), recitation with a TA (where you can ask
for aditional detailed questions), and homework sets (that you'll want to
discuss with the TA as well). If you have good labs, you'll actually prove
many of the relationships by experiment... and you'll see how hard it is to
actually do science (there are so damn many ways to do physical things
wrong!).

Like programming the details involve sitting down and cranking out the
solutions and having the aha moments by yourself. It's easy to be wowed by a
lecture, but if you can't teach it to someone else you don't really understand
it.

~~~
lysium
You are right, our teacher / school could have combined upfront teaching with
all the activities you've described!

~~~
kurthr
Yeah, it can be frustrating. Try to develop friends with the same interest at
multiple levels, and you can fill in some of the gaps yourself. Asking the
professor during office hours what other learning opportunities they know of
which will help the depth of the course may get you an advocate and a few
suggestions. They may be frustrated and burned out too.

The most frustrated I ever saw professors were teaching pre-med, where the
students literally only cared about the grades.

------
telotortium
> 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.

------
RobertRoberts
This guy promotes evidence based education, meaning you can't "guess" or
"hope" that an educational technique works, you have to be able to prove,
demonstrate and repeatedly get effective results with your education. Direct
instruction (from the little I know) works, and has been rigorously tested
scientifically.

[http://measuredeffects.com/](http://measuredeffects.com/)

The quote on the home page:

> _" Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often
> vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made
> precise.

\--J.Tukey, 1962"_

------
MarkMc
Coincidentally I just finished reading the section on minimal guidance in the
great book, "How I Wish I'd Taught Maths" [1]

Here's the relevant bit:

\---------

 _Guided discovery lesson plans can be found on most topics in maths. Geometry
is a particularly fertile breeding ground. Take something like circle
theorems. Instead of simply explaining to students the Angle at the Centre
relationship, why not have them discover it for themselves? Give them a set of
blank circles, instructions to construct several formulations of the theorem,
each time giving them complete freedom as to where they place their three
points on the circumference, challenge them to measure the two relevant angles
and then see what they notice. Students get important practice of measuring
angles, a feeling of involvement in their own learning, and may even teach
themselves a key GCSE topic without me needing to say a word. What could
possibly go wrong?

I was particularly proud of a guided discovery task I came up with for
introducing some of the more complex laws of indices to my Year 11 class two
years ago. The worksheet looked like this:

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PfJjT058t55C_LR8LE1D3PaSRg9...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PfJjT058t55C_LR8LE1D3PaSRg9tY490/view?usp=drivesdk)

Nice, eh? Again, I ask the question: what could possibly go wrong? Well, quite
a lot, as it turns out.

Take the laws of indices lesson. The best that can happen is that all students
discover the laws of indices for themselves, leaving no gaps in their
knowledge, nor developing any misconceptions, in a reasonable time frame. We
can then proceed with the rest of the lesson, maybe moving on to application
questions, or interleaving other topics into the examples (see Chapter 12),
such as indices involving surds or fractions. How often does that actually
happen? In my experience, literally never. What actually happens is that one
or two students discover exactly what I wanted them to discover. They are
feeling great about themselves, and rightly so –as we have seen in Chapter 2,
success is motivating. A handful of students have some kind of idea what is
going on, but with an eclectic mix of gaps in their knowledge and newly formed
misconceptions. Some of these students are aware they have gaps and
misconceptions, others are blissfully ignorant. And the rest of the students
do not have a flipping clue what is going on. They are feeling confused and
pretty down about themselves when they see their fellow classmates have
figured it out. Any form of decent formative assessment strategy (Chapter 11)
quickly reveals this disparity between levels of understanding, and as such I
cannot move on with the lesson. So what do I inevitably end up doing? Teaching
the laws of indices, of course! Maybe I will set those students who seem to
have understood it off on the work I hoped everyone else would be moving on to
–mind you, I would really like them to hear my explanation and do the worked
examples, but how can I justify doing so when they have demonstrated their
understanding? Hmmm…

Anyway, back to the rest of the class. By this stage, I am 30 minutes into a
50-minute lesson, rattling through a series of worked examples on the laws of
indices far quicker and with much less care than I should. There is zero time
for the students to practise their newly acquired skills and hence consolidate
their knowledge, nor sufficient time for me to do any kind of application
questions which would show them the full breadth of the topic.

But it is even worse than that. Even if I could somehow freeze time and spend
those lost 30 minutes going through carefully structured and well-chosen
worked examples, I am not back at square one. I am behind square one, because
my students are no longer coming at the topic with fresh eyes. Many of those
who failed to ‘discover’ the key relationships have already decided that
indices are difficult, and yet another area of maths that they don’t
understand. It’s going to take more than my magically retrieved 30 minutes to
turn that one around._

\--------

Later the author describes how his approach has now changed to direct
guidance. Of this approach he writes:

 _A common complaint I hear from teachers when I describe this approach is
that students are not as actively involved as they would be during guided
discovery. My response is that it depends on what you mean by active, and its
anthesis, passive. If active students are ones making noise, working in
groups, moving around the classroom, going about the task several different
ways, getting some things right but plenty of things wrong, whereas passive
students are sitting there quietly, thinking hard about the mathematics I am
presenting, then I know which one I would prefer, especially at this early
knowledge acquisition stage. For me, such ‘activity’ is exactly the poor proxy
for learning that Coe (2013) warns us about. Students may well be active, but
active doing what? What are they thinking about? What are they expanding their
precious, limited working memory reserves on? During these demonstrations, my
students are active in another sense. They are actively thinking hard about
the matter in hand – or at least I am creating conditions to give them the
very best chance of thinking hard about the matter in hand, and nothing else.
Such activity is impossible to see, hence it is often dismissed as passivity
and a lack of engagement. But periods of quiet contemplation like this are the
key to learning, especially when we consider in greater depth the limits of
working memory_

1] [https://www.amazon.com/How-Wish-Taught-Maths-
conversations/d...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Wish-Taught-Maths-
conversations/dp/1911382497)

~~~
kwhitefoot
Interesting. But it seems to me that the teacher is in a bind because of the
assumption that it is necessary that all students learn the same things. If we
really want everyone to have an interest in learning then we have to
accommodate all the different abilities and interests that the students have.
What the teaching profession has to be able to do is not to teach specific
subjects but to enable the students to learn and somehow enthuse them to do
it.

The problem is that then it is hard to measure the result. And in these days
when quantifiability is regarded as the only necessary attribute of pretty
much anything we end up falling back on measuring what we can rather than
producing students who want to learn and are able to learn.

And when it comes to employment what most employers need is not someone with
specific skills in mathematics or computer programming but someone who is
willing to work, to improve, and to work with the rest of the department,
someone who sees beyond narrow self interest.

~~~
camelite
> it seems to me that the teacher is in a bind because of the assumption that
> it is necessary that all students learn the same things.

That's not the starting point. The starting point is that there is one teacher
and many students. The necessity for student to learn the same thing derives
from the impossibility for the teacher of teaching more than one thing at the
same time.

> we have to accommodate all the different abilities and interests that the
> students have

The craft of teaching is actually the opposite: it is to boil down the
necessary priors for some specific learning to occur, and ruthlessly
disregarding all other factors. If those priors are not in place you go back
and teach them instead, recursively. It helps a lot obviously if students are
grouped by current capabilities.

> What the teaching profession has to be able to do is not to teach specific
> subjects but to enable the students to learn and somehow enthuse them to do
> it.

Failure is demotivating; success is motivating. Motivation is baked into the
pie.

> And in these days when quantifiability is regarded as the only necessary
> attribute of pretty much anything we end up falling back on measuring what
> we can rather than producing students who want to learn and are able to
> learn.

In the world of education, quantifiability is absolutely 100% not a priority.
If it was, successful approaches to instruction would have propagated long
ago, instead of the typical aspirational mush that passes for analysis these
days.

> And when it comes to employment what most employers need is not someone with
> specific skills in mathematics or computer programming but someone who is
> willing to work, to improve, and to work with the rest of the department,
> someone who sees beyond narrow self interest.

They need both actually. Neither competence nor motivation alone will do the
job. And frankly, it's somewhat going beyond your remit as an educator to
decide what students should be motivated by. That's on them. The teacher's job
is to teach.

------
dhimes
Also relevant- (2004 pdf)

[https://app.nova.edu/toolbox/instructionalproducts/8001/EDD8...](https://app.nova.edu/toolbox/instructionalproducts/8001/EDD8001/SUM12/2004-Mayer.pdf)

But, yeah, I think anybody who has taught anything beyond the experiential
discovers this. Mayers summarizes it as people have confused constructivist
theories of learning with effective ways of teaching. We might learn through
constructivism, but learning is more efficient if we _guide_ that
construction.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
I'm a former teacher and I disagree pretty strongly with the paper based on
both my experience and on the fact that this paper has been pretty thoroughly
gutted by the literature. The more specific you want the knowledge outputs to
be, the more guidance you have to give, as a general rule, but inquiry-based
approaches lead to something I call "white swan" learning (with
apologies/thanks to Taleb). People often find something through the inquiry
that they're enthusiastic about learning, and then they continue learning
about that long after they've completed whatever was required. It's not
something you can plan, and you don't know which or how many kids will find
something with which project, but it happens reliably and for each of those
kids finding that topic (and the joy and practice of learning something they
are interested in in-depth) is far more effective than semesters of "normal"
learning.

~~~
dhimes
If you want your students to discover the Newton's second law you are going to
have a hard time getting them to do so in a two-hour lab. It took Newton
himself considerably longer, and he was actually deeply interested in the
problem.

Inquiry does work well, but not without guidance, unless your sole outcome
goal is the inquiry process itself. Even at the other end of the spectrum, the
Ph.D. candidate or post-doc, things can get pretty miserable if they are
poorly mentored.

So while I applaud you for helping develop natural curiosity (but does it
stick? That's another question. Do those kids go on to ask more questions like
you've started an engine in their minds, or two years later are they just like
everybody else...), if you have curricular goals to meet such that their
future classes depend on them knowing the content you are supposed to teach,
guiding them is much more efficient.

------
aj7
Proof is watching average machinists struggle to get decent postable CNC
machine instructions from the Autodesk 360 “free” CAM system. Well-trained
machinists and college guys have no problems. But most would be better off
manually programming.

------
mario0b1
This paper is really fascinating (because one of my flatmates is a huge
advocate for unguided learning). Do any newer papers like this exist? Maybe
even one that shows that minimal guidance could be positive?

I'd love to read more.

~~~
eBombzor
You may have already seen this but @sdrothrock posted this interesting
counter-article that defends constructionism (minimal guidance).

~~~
eBombzor
[https://bdld.blogspot.com/2011/06/five-years-later-review-
of...](https://bdld.blogspot.com/2011/06/five-years-later-review-of-
kirschner.html)

~~~
mario0b1
Thanks!

