Learning-Focused Instruction: Guidance

From a learning-focused perspective, instruction consists of two major components, tasks and guidance. While students actively perform instructional tasks the teacher provides instructional guidance intended to help them perform the tasks adequately [1].

Instructional guidance consists of the explicit and observable teacher actions that are intended to help students think their way through the implicit and unobservable cognitive processes for which an instructional task is intended. Students generally learn little, is anything, from performing tasks if they do not receive guidance of some kind during and after their performance of those tasks [2]. Instructional guidance may come from the teacher, from other students, from a computer-based program, or as a natural consequence of performing a task. How much students learn from performing an instructional task is directly related to how (a) frequently they are provided guidance while performing the task, and how (b) appropriate that guidance is for the task and the task’s objective [3].

Teachers adjust instructional guidance according to students’ continuously developing levels of ability by varying the explicitness of their guidance actions. When the teacher initiates instruction for an objective, gives students an appropriate instructional task, and students perform the task inadequately, the teacher then provides them very explicit guidance. As students’ learning progressively increases, the teacher provides them other suitable tasks and increasingly less explicit guidance. Reducing the specificity of guidance is done gradually, in accordance with students’ developing ability [4]. Two types of instructional guidance are decisive in determining the effectiveness of instruction, focusing attention and providing feedback [5].

While students perform an instructional task the teacher can focus their attention on the information the teacher wants them to learn. Attention is a state of mind wherein a person expects to process certain information while simultaneously suppressing other information [6]. Attention may involve the selection of information from two sources, (a) information from the environment and (b) information already stored in long-term memory [7]. The purpose for focusing students’ attention is to prime them to deal with certain information in ways that are pertinent for the instructional task and the knowledge category for which the task is designed [8]. An effective way of focusing students’ attention on pertinent information that is in their environment, or stored in their long-term memory, is to ask them priming questions [9].

While students perform an instructional task the teacher can provide feedback by giving them information about how well they are performing. Feedback functions in two ways, it (a) confirms the adequacy or inadequacy of students’ performance of tasks, and (b) corrects students’ inadequate task performance in ways that are intended to enable them to perform the same kind of tasks adequately the next time they do them [10].

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1 Kowitz, G.T., & Smith, J.C. (1985). The dynamics of successful feedback. Performance and Instruction, 24 (8), 4-6.

2 Moreno, R. (2004). Decreasing cognitive load in novice students: Effects of explanatory versus corrective feedback in discovery-based multimedia. Instructional Science, 32, 99-113.

3 Wood, D.J. (1980). Teaching the young child: Some relationships between social interactions, language, and thought. In D.R. Olson (Ed.), The social foundations of language and thought. New York: Norton.

4 Moore, R., & Goldiamond, I. (1964). Errorless establishment of visual discrimination using fading procedures. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 7, 269-272.

5. Levin, T. (1981). Effective instruction. Alexandra, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

6 Grabe, M. (1986). Attentional processes in education. In G.C. Phye & T. Andre (Eds). Cognitive classroom learning. New York: Academic Press

7 Posner, M.I. (1978) Chronometric explorations of the mind: The Third Paul M. Fitts Lecture. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum

8 Adams, A., Carnine, D.W., & Gersten, R. (1982). Instructional strategies for studying content area testa in the intermediate grades. Reading Research Quarterly, 18, 27-55.

9 Andre, T. (1979). Does answering higher level questions while reading facilitate productive learning? Review of Educational Research, 49, 280-318.

10 Duchastel, P. (1979). Learning objectives and the organization of prose. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 11-16.