ABSTRACT
The task of developing a psychology of instruction is formidable because we must first understand the nature of knowledge, how it is acquired, under what conditions it might be taught, and the signs by which its attainment might be celebrated. Of course, our task would be foredoomed if every area of knowledge were so distinctive in its requirements on the human mind that completely different cognitive processes were invoked in each case. If so, then the most help educators might realistically expect from psychologists would be a pluralism of principles consisting of independent sets of heuristic tricks, especially tailored for each area of pedagogical focus.
