Paradigm Shift Requires Focus Shift

Shifting from a traditional paradigm of instructional practice to the paradigm presented here, that aligns instruction with cognitive psychology, requires a comparable shift in the point of view of instruction, from exposure focused to learning focused. From the perspective of the teacher, exposure-focused instruction involves presenting information to students through lectures, recitation and group activities, and having students do teacher-made and commercially-produced textual and audiovisual materials. By contrast, from the perspective of the teacher, learning-focused instruction involves helping students acquire knowledge they do not possess when instruction begins by having them do appropriate tasks that require their active performance, while the teacher continually provides them guidance in ways intended to enable them to adequately perform the tasks, and thus acquire the desired knowledge. Extensive classroom research shows that most of the instruction provided in schools, ranging from kindergarten through graduate school, and in most academic subjects, is exposure focused [1].

Instructional reforms have failed largely because the innovations have been based on the same faulty exposure-focused view as the programs they replaced [2]. In a particularly illuminating study of the lack of genuine reform in mathematics instruction as a result of the nationwide introduction of new math programs a decade earlier, Sarason [3] found that the only observable difference between the way teachers instructed for mathematics in “new math” classrooms and in “traditional math” classrooms was that teachers in one used “new math” textbooks while teachers in the other used “traditional math” textbooks. Not surprisingly, the hoped for increases in students’ mathematics achievement as a result of the introduction of the new math programs were never realized. Sarason concluded that the effectiveness of classroom instruction is not likely to increase as long as the instruction teachers provide is based on an exposure-focused view. As a comic strip character once wondered, “How can you teach new math with an old math mind?”

A different kind of exposure-focused program has arisen and persisted during the last five decades, discovery programs. The programs are based on the premise that learning occurs when the student strives to make sense of material presented as a problem to be solved while carrying out activities such as group discussions, hands-on participation and interactive games. The teacher provides little or no guidance. As a natural result of working on the problem and doing the activities the student supposedly selects relevant incoming information from the problem, organizes it into a coherent structure and integrates it with other organized knowledge [4]. The first programs were called discovery learning, which gave way to something called experiential learning, which gave way to problem-based and inquiry learning, and then to constructivist instruction. The names of the programs changed each time research showed their predecessor’s ineffectiveness [5].

By contrast, learning-focused instruction, to which we will now turn, is based on theory-based research of how people learn, and on an understanding and utilization of the mechanisms by which they can be helped to learn. The focus is on the learner and guiding the learner, not on the materials and activities to which the learner is exposed.

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1. (For example). American Association for the Advancement of Science. Science for all Americans. (1989)., F. (1990). Washington, D.C.: Author.

2. (For example). Reif, F. (1990). Transcending prevailing approaches to science education. In M. Gardner, J.G. Greeno, F. Reif,,A.H. Schonfeld, A. diSessa, and E. Stage (Eds.). Toward a scientific practice of science education. (pp. 91-109). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

3. Sarason, S.B. (1971). The culture of school and the problem of change. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

4. Mayer, R.E. (2003). Learning and instruction. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

5. Mayer, R.E. (2004). Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery? The case for guided methods of instruction. American Psychologist, Vol. 59 (1), 14-19.