A challenge to constructivism

There's nothing quite so discomfiting as a challenge to your view of the world, particularly when it comes armed with a multitude of solid references and what seems like 'conclusive evidence'. So this paper, WHY MINIMALLY GUIDED INSTRUCTION DOES NOT WORK, by Paul Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard Clark, must have put quite a few liberal educational noses out of joint when it was published in Educational Psychologist in January of this year.

I found the paper quite enjoyable, probably because it seemed to me that just below the academic surface was much supressed hostility. I expect the process was quite cathartic for the three authors (spread, as they are, as widely as California, the Netherlands and New South Wales).

I must confess to being enamoured by many of the precepts associated with constructivism. After all, I'm a child of the 60s and inherently liberal. I don't like authoritarian, highly-structured, teacher-centric instruction any more than most of my contemporaries. So, this paper helped to keep me honest. It reminded me that inexperienced, low ability and dependent learners generally do not thrive in discovery learning contexts; in fact (the authors suggest) they may end up knowing less after the event than they did before. It reinforced that structured instruction can work well in the right context, even if it is not always popular, forcing you, as it does, to have to concentrate quite hard!

What the paper does not shed much light on is the context in which learning is taking place and the effect this might have on the decisions you make. It matters who it is that has decided that the learning is needed, and who is attempting to make it happen. Most of my experience has been working with adults who have considerable work and general life experience, some rather negative recollections of their formal education and training, and a desire to be in control of what they learn and how. In a new era in which informal learning is beginning to flourish, I don't fancy being the one to impose too much structure on them, do you?