ABSTRACT
Human cognitive architecture constitutes a natural information-processing system whose evolution has been driven by another natural informationprocessing system, evolution by natural selection. Considering human cognition from an evolutionary perspective has considerable instructional consequences. Those consequences can be used by theories such as cognitive-load theory to generate instructional procedures. Procedures generated by cognitive-load theory place their emphasis on explicit instruction rather than versions of discovery learning or constructivist teaching. Discovery-learning techniques were developed prior to our current understanding of human cognitive architecture and, it is argued, are incompatible with that architecture. As a consequence and unsurprisingly, the field has failed to produce a large body of empirical research based on randomized controlled experiments demonstrating the effectiveness of constructivist teaching techniques. Constructivist teaching techniques that guide students to find information for themselves rather than presenting that information explicitly have provided a favored instructional technique among education researchers for several decades. The popularity of such techniques can probably be sourced back to Bruner (1961) who used Piagetian theory (e.g., Piaget, 1928) to emphasize discovery learning. Minimally guided instructional techniques (see Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006) were developed prior to our current understanding of human cognitive architecture. In this chapter, I will argue that such techniques make little sense in light of our current understanding of human cognition. There are many aspects of constructivism that are unobjectionable. For example, we surely must construct mental representations of the external world that we can use to function in that world. In that sense, all learning is essentially constructivist and I am not aware of any theorist who objects to this characterization of learning. Constructivist teaching intended to teach people how to construct knowledge by withholding information from learners is another matter entirely. Withholding easily presented information from learners is a major characteristic of constructivist teaching, inquiry and problem-based learning. Requiring students to discover knowledge rather than explicitly providing them with essential information has become a dominant teaching paradigm. It is a paradigm based on the assumption that knowledge acquired during a problemsolving search is more useful than the same knowledge presented explicitly by an
instructor. The purpose of this chapter is to indicate that there is nothing in our cognitive architecture suggesting that it might be beneficial to withhold readily presentable information from students so that they can discover it themselves.
