ABSTRACT
In the 1950s, when Herb Simon and his colleagues were warming up for later feats with complex information processing systems, experimental work and theory building in learning were arenas of hot activity in behavioral science. At that time we knew more about learning than we did about the competence and expertise that learning produce. Over the last three decades, this situation has reversed. Cognitive science has devoted energies to the investigation of performance in areas such as memory, problem solving, the structure of knowledge, human development, and intelligence; investigations of how knowledge and cognitive skill are acquired have been fewer. With the advance of our science, we are also looking closely at the relationships between theory, practice, and technology—a mature science should profit from their interrelationships. With this in mind, I want to ask what our current understanding of performance can contribute to learning and instructional theory and to examine this question further by describing how the design of instruction now reflects assumptions about the acquisition of knowledge and skill.
