Why Minimal Guidance Instruction Does Not Work
Author: Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller, Richard E. Clark
"The aim of all instruction is to alter long-term memory. If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned"
An overview
This article is a review of many pieces of research into the most effective and efficient methods of teaching. It is making a direct comparison between what it terms direct instruction ("…providing information that fully explains the concepts and procedures that students are required to learn…" through the use of worked examples and explanations) and minimally guided instruction ("…students are placed in inquiry learning contexts and asked to discover the fundamental and well-known principles…" through investigations, experiential learning activities and problem based learning).
The article starts by discussing the architecture of the human brain, explaining the difference between long-term memory and working memory, and some of the immediate implications from these ideas. There is a lot of research that has taken place into the cognitive functions of humans over the last few decades, and the authors use this research throughout as a backing for their claims.
First focusing on long-term memory, it is stated that "…expert problem solvers derive their skill by drawing on the extensive experience stored in their long-term memory…" and concluding that "…we are skillful in an area because our long-term memory contains huge amounts of information concerning the area". These feed into the idea that we as teachers want to improve the long-term memory of our students within our subject, as the best way to improve is to have more information to draw upon.
Secondly, with regards to working memory, the authors say "…almost all information stored in working memory and not rehearsed is lost within 30 seconds…" and "…the capacity of working memory is limited to only a very small number of elements…".
The article pulls these two parts of the cognitive function of humans together to explain that minimal guidance instruction actually ignores much of this evidence. The authors claim that by using a discovery based form of teaching you are making the process of learning much more difficult for students since "…while working memory is being used to search for problem solutions, it is not available and cannot be used to learn … it is possible to search for extended periods of time with quite minimal alterations to long-term memory…".
The article then continues by looking at the reasons why minimally guided instruction has such a following, when there is significant evidence against it, and focuses on the constructivist argument that learning involves constructing new knowledge within your own brain. The authors argue that while the premise is correct, the methods used in a minimally guided classroom to achieve this are less efficient and more likely to lead to misconceptions in students understanding than in a direct instruction classroom.
Following this it explores how the research supports direct instruction, explaining that this method vastly reduces cognitive load in the working memory, and the importance of worked examples when dealing with novice learners. The authors acknowledge that "…the worked example effect first disappears and then reverses as the learners' expertise increases…" implying that while the method of direct instruction is best for students when first encountering something, this is not the best way to teach an expert in a particular area, and for them a minimally guided approach would be more suitable.
"Direct instruction involving considerable guidance, including examples, resulted in vastly more learning than discovery. Those relatively few students who learned via discovery showed no signs of superior quality of learning."
My reflections
"…guided instruction not only produced more immediate recall of facts than unguided approaches, but also longer term transfer and problem-solving skills…"
For me this article made clear some of the ideas from the previous article I read, explaining the long-term memory and working-memory model of the brain and how it supports the idea of direct instruction, and in particular the use of worked examples. It also unpicked some of the niggling feelings I have had in the past when running inquiry-based or discovery lessons, namely that students can be working hard on solving a problem but not actually learning anything.
Another very interesting point for me is that to become good problem solvers, students need to become experts in the area in which they want to solve problems. I read this as you cannot teach problem solving, but should rather focus on ensuring the students have a very good understanding of the concepts required to solve a problem, before pushing them to solve these problems. That way, when they come across these problems they will not be using working memory to discover what to do , but can focus this all on solving the problem as they can refer to their long term memory for the specifics.
Finally, although this suggests that minimally guided tasks are inefficient and ineffective methods of teaching novices, it does accept that they are acceptable ways to teach experts. So once I have taught the material, and students know it well, I believe there is still a place for discoveries and inquiries at the end of this sequence, rather than at the beginning like I have done previously. How I will implement this is something I need to further consider.
"Controlled experiments almost uniformly indicate that when dealing with novel information, learners should be explicitly shown what to do and how to do it."
You may also be interested in the blog post by Rachel Moore discussing this article in a critical light with reference to other articles: Is Direct Instruction the Answer to the Right Question