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Constructivism Revisited: progress in ever decreasing circles

Alexander Romiszowski
(Educational Technology 46/5, September-October 2006, pp61-63)

Are post-objectivist educators on the wrong track(s)?

About two years ago, this magazine published an animated exchange, instigated by Clifton Chadwick’s somewhat provocative article, entitled “Why I am not a Constructivist”.  I read this article and the series of rebuttals and replies with interest, noting particularly the way that the discussion developed as argument was followed by counter-argument. Chadwick’s original paper, as I recall, rejected the constructivist position as a basis for the design and implementation of instruction on the grounds that such approaches have not been shown to lead to instructional improvements, and then proceeded to an analysis of constructivist philosophies in order demonstrate why such approaches could not be expected to add value to the teaching-learning process. The ensuing rebuttals, however, focused on Chadwick’s interpretation of the philosophies and largely ignored the initial reason for including such an article in a magazine that focuses on the technology of education, where “technology” is understood in the broad sense of applying scientifically proven knowledge to the solution of practical real-world problems.

I was tempted to enter into the discussion at that time, but did not do so, discouraged in part by the low level of interaction possible when a series of papers and commentaries is published in subsequent bi-monthly editions of a journal (and not knowing if the readers of a commentary had actually read the paper being commented) and in part by the drift of the discussion away from the aspect that I personally considered crucial – the question of whether or not (and why) the approaches “work”. I have, however, been stimulated to return to this issue in the context of this interactive column, where those who have an interest may, through online discussion, engage speedily and intensively in the debate.

Also, I was particularly stimulated by a paper, published recently, that has once more opened up this issue in a most provocative manner. The paper in question, by Paul Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard Clark and entitled “Why Minimally Guided Instruction Does Not Work”, was published in Educational Psychologist 41(2), in June 2006. In this month’s column I review this paper, make my own comments on some of the key points, and hopefully will get readers to enter on one or other side of the debate.

The first question to consider is the meaning of the term “minimally guided instruction”. The authors use it to describe a series of methodologies including discovery learning, problem-based learning, inquiry learning, experiential learning and constructivist learning, which they consider to be “differently named but essentially pedagogically equivalent approaches”. What leads the authors to consider these approaches as pedagogically equivalent is that there are some shared assumptions underlying all these forms of instructional programs: “first, they challenge students to solve ‘authentic’ problems or acquire complex knowledge in information-rich settings based on the assumption that having learners construct their own solutions leads to the most effective learning experience; second, they appear to assume that knowledge can best be acquired through experience based on the procedures of the discipline”. Another common aspect the authors mention is a tendency to provide students with limited guidance and “real-world” incomplete or unstructured information on the problems to be solved.

The second question to consider is what the authors mean by “does not work”. As defined above, minimally guided instruction represents the main stream of innovative approaches to rethinking of the teaching-learning process over the last half century. It includes methodologies based on the writings of many well known authors such as Bruner, Kolb, Papert and Vygotzky. It has been accepted, in one or other of its forms, by many partisan groups of education professionals, in both formal education and corporate training, as the rallying cry, almost the religion, by which they organize their professional life. So it may come as quite a shock to many to have their mainstream beliefs questioned. But the authors are quite clear and direct in their research-based attack:

“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 supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners. Even for students with considerable prior knowledge, strong guidance while learning is most often found to be equally effective as unguided approaches. Not only is unguided instruction normally less effective, there is evidence that it may have negative results when students acquire misconceptions or incomplete and/or disorganized knowledge”.

A provocative question: are these tracks circular, ultimately leading nowhere?

The above quoted paragraph summarizes several pages that review the research on all the methodologies that the authors have included in the blanket-term ‘minimally guided instruction’. They also quote previous research reviews published over the years that have consistently reported similar findings. This column is not the appropriate place to enter into the details of the research reviews or of specific studies. Readers are directed to the original article, which contains a bibliography of other relevant publications. The declared purpose of this column is to stimulate debate, so let’s “stir it up”.

My first provocation will, however, make reference to one of the quoted reviews: “Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery-learning? The case for guided methods of instruction”. (Mayer, R. American Psychologist, 59(1) 2004), where we find the following indictment: “in each decade since the mid 1950’s, when empirical studies provided solid evidence that the then currently popular unguided approach did not work, a similar approach popped up under a different name with the cycle then repeating itself ….each new set of advocates for unguided approaches seemed either unaware or uninterested in previous evidence that unguided approaches had not been validated …..this pattern produced discovery learning which gave way to experiential learning which gave way to problem-based and inquiry learning which now gives way to constructivist instructional techniques”.

No punches pulled here! The implication is that some (maybe most) educators are oblivious to the lessons learned from empirical research. Do they not read the research? Do they consider it irrelevant to their context? Or do they purposely ignore it if the results do not support some pre-determined hidden agenda? Is the case of ‘minimally guided instruction’ unique, or have similar phenomena been observed in other contexts?

The last of these questions reminds me of a parallel case in my own experience. Some fifteen years ago I was working on problems and issues involved in the design of simulators for training in complex skills. Projects included applications in military and in paramedical and nurse training. In both contexts, the projects arose as a result of evidence that the investment in simulator design and development – many millions of dollars annually in the case of the military training applications – was not leading to the expected improvements in learning. Analysis showed that the design teams involved habitually followed certain principles, one of which was “fidelity” – the simulated experience should replicate as closely as possible the “real life” experience of doing the job.

However, a search of the literature on fidelity in simulator design revealed a chain of studies, initiating from some of the earliest work of Robert Gagné in the1950’s, clearly demonstrating that absolute fidelity to the real-life job situation in the simulated exercise was ineffective, especially in the early stages of learning. Partial simulation, that focused attention on the key skill elements that had to be learned, that enhanced relevant guidance and feedback information, and eliminated irrelevant “noise” that could distract the learner, was shown to be the most effective design for the early stages of learning. It was, indeed, quite possible to construct a research-based design theory for the incorporation of fidelity – indeed different aspects of fidelity (physical, perceptual, etc.) – in specific ways at specific stages of the learning process. However, the bulk of those involved in the design of simulators were completely ignoring this research base.

The parallel of this case to the ones described in the paper I am commenting are very close indeed. Is this just coincidence, or are these just some examples of a more general social-professional phenomenon? Are we simply returning to the observation made by John Dewey way back in the 1920’s that education suffers more than most areas of human enterprise from the “baby and bathwater syndrome” – that each new generation of educators perceives some problems in the system as it stands and so proceeds to reorganize it or substitute it with a new system that may possibly eliminate some of the problems, but inevitably throws out much of what was good with the bad?

Maybe education is doomed to progress in ever repeating circles of reform that lead nowhere. Maybe this is a phenomenon of society in general, summarized so neatly in the French expression “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”- the more things change the more they stay the same. I wonder if any readers have opinions on this issue.

An alternative question: are they different tracks to different goals?

However, here is a second provocation, from a different vantage point. Is it possible that the research studies reviewed in the article are flawed? The authors seem to totally ignore the counter arguments often presented by proponents of minimally guided approaches, that the conventional criteria used for evaluation are inappropriate – that emphasis on the construction of knowledge by interaction with ‘authentic’ problems and situations seeks (and possibly achieves) other outcomes of the teaching-learning process than those capable of being measured by means of the conventionally accepted testing and evaluation procedures.

It is surprising that the paper did not address this issue, especially as one of the authors, Richard Clark, has built his reputation on debunking a half-century of research on the effectiveness of instructional media, exactly on the grounds that much of it was based on flawed research design. Should we not be looking in a similarly critical manner at the design of the research on minimally guided instruction methodologies? Is it indeed possible to experimentally compare two approaches to instruction if their expected outcomes are quite different? On the other hand, is it admissible, in a society that invests significant amounts of scarce resources in the construction of an education system for its citizens, that there exist such divergent views regarding the expected outcomes?

In this context, I recall the extensive series of articles on constructivist-inspired instructional design that appeared in two special editions of this magazine in May and September of 1991, and especially the final paper written by David Jonassen, the contributing editor of the series, in which he addressed the question of “Evaluating Constructivistic Learning”.   He first commented that the authors of the papers, who were also participants in a NATO conference on “Designing Constructivistic Learning Environments”, were somewhat unwilling to address problems in evaluation that are raised by constructivism. And he said that he did not blame them for that, since “evaluation of learning from constructivistic environments is perhaps the most difficult issue related to constructivism”. He then proceeded to list and comment a series of possible approaches and related issues such as: goal-free evaluation methodologies; context-driven evaluation methodologies; learning-context-dependant evaluation; the need for different approaches to evaluation at different stages of learning and acquisition of expertise; the need to evaluate the multiple perspectives a student may generate on an issue; the associated need for multiple evaluation perspectives and therefore multiple evaluators; the issues involved in evaluating the processes, rather than the products, of knowledge-construction; etc.

In my view, despite this valiant attempt at listing and analyzing a range of pertinent factors that might differentiate the evaluation processes that would be appropriate in constructivist (as opposed to objectivist) inspired instructional systems, no clear procedural distinctions emerge that would assist a designer in setting up appropriate evaluation systems that clearly measure some “other outcomes” that might be expected from a ‘minimally guided instruction’ methodology. Jonassen’s only strong conclusion may be summarized as: IF constructivistic instructional methodologies were to be implemented on a large scale and IF they were to be appropriately evaluated, THEN “education requires perhaps a larger revolution than any have bargained for, that ultimately we must reconceptualize the outcomes of education from a societal perspective”.

In other words, the message from 15 years back, based on the analysis of the work of some of the world’s leading proponents at that time of constructivist approaches to instruction, was that such approaches are incompatible with the present macro-organization of most of the world’s educational systems. And there has been little sign, either before or since, that the “larger revolution” mentioned by Jonassen is likely to take place. Maybe this is the reason that the paper on minimally guided instruction does not even address the issue of alternative goals and evaluation methodologies. It seems to take the position that the currently accepted goals of education are the ones to be pursued, and if this is the case, then the currently accepted evaluation criteria are the correct and valid ones to use in any comparison. It then follows that we should employ the instructional methodologies that have been shown to be superior according to these criteria.  

So, which is the right track – and why?

This brings us to the third and last question we should consider, which is encapsulated in the first word of the title of the article that stimulated this column: WHY minimally guided instruction does not work - and as a corollary, what DOES work, and why? The authors are quite clear as to their position on these questions:

“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. While 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”.

They continue by stressing that instructional methods that ignore human cognitive architecture are not likely to be effective, and that minimally guided instruction appears to proceed with no reference to the characteristics of working memory, long-term memory or the relations between them. They make several further stabs at the current ideological trends in education, prefacing their comments by stating that the “constructivist description of learning is accurate, but the instructional consequences suggested by constructivists do not necessarily follow”. They make the point that learners must construct a mental representation or schema irrespective of whether they are given complete information or partial information, but complete information will result in a more accurate representation that is also more easily acquired: “despite the alleged advantages of unguided environments to help students to derive meaning from learning materials, cognitive load theory suggests that the free exploration of a highly complex environment may generate a heavy working memory load that is detrimental to learning”.

They also criticize the shift of emphasis away from teaching a discipline as a body of knowledge towards learning a discipline by experiencing its processes and procedures: “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”. And the final conclusion of the paper returns to the attack, stating that “it is regrettable that current constructivist views have become ideological and often epistemologically opposed to the presentation and explanation of knowledge”.

The debate is on.

Well, the lines of battle have been set – or rather they have been redrawn, as we are of course reopening discussions that have been going on for a long time.  Surely, such a strong attack on constructivist approaches to instruction (and by association, the other approaches here classified as minimally guided instruction) will generate some rebuttals and counter arguments. Recalling the series of articles generated by Clifton Chadwick’s paper, mentioned in the opening paragraph, let us hope that any discussion generated by this column will continue to address the initial questions, as raised by the Kirschner, Sweller and Clark paper and will avoid the temptation to enter too deeply into a philosophical debate on the nature of man, mind and society, thereby forgetting the prime purpose of discussing the improvement of the teaching-learning process.

Furthermore, recalling the structure (rather than the content) of the first column in this series, let us see if we can maintain quality in the overall structure of our debate, by being quite clear about the vantage point from which we address our comments. For example, it may be useful to keep in mind that the “human cognitive architecture” vantage point adopted by the authors in discussing why minimally guided instruction does not work, is quite different from the vantage points adopted by Vygotzky and others when discussing the construction of knowledge and socially negotiated meaning. We should also remember that arguing against each other from different vantage points without appreciating the other’s vantage point is likely to get us nowhere - and slowly.

Finally, let us see if our discussion leads towards greater clarity on some of the basic concepts that are used in the debate. It is high time that we worked out a more uniform usage of the terminology in our field – something that is considered essential for the development of a scientifically based discipline. Yes, I do realize that the last sentence must have been written some hundreds of times throughout the short history of educational technology, and that commissions have been formed to clarify the definitions of our terminology. But we are still often tripping ourselves up on the use of our words. Maybe we should devote a future column especially to this issue? “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”.
In order to post any comments on the views expressed in this article, or to add any further contributions from your own particular vantage points, join me at the following URL: http://www.tts-global.com/blog/ . I look forward to continuing the debate.

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