Cited by 7,776Visual and Cognitive Learning ProcessesInnovative Teaching and Learning MethodsEducational Strategies and Epistemologies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 127 of the 140 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 6 of the 86 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching

Open access
Kirschner, Paul A., Sweller, John, Clark, Richard E.·2006·Educational Psychologist

Abstract

Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert–novice differences, and cognitive load. Although unguided or minimally guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing, the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half-century that consistently indicate that minimally guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process. The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide "internal" guidance. Recent developments in instructional research and instructional design models that support guidance during instruction are briefly described.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1

Cites

127 of 127 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

34 Own interpretation · 32 No full text of the sources · 16 Sources not found · 12 No basis given · 8 Not checked yet · 4 Partly supported · 2 Supported · accuracy not yet measured

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 24
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 29
47 of 47

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

1 of 1

Citations

Cites

Show all 140 references

Research works printed but not linked: 9

  1. Ausubel D. P., 1964, The Arithmetic Teacher, 11, 290
  2. Bernstein, D. A., Penner, L. A., Clarke-Stewart, A., Roy, E. J. & Wickens, C. D. (2003). Psychology (6th ed.). Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
  3. Clark R. E., 1998, Educational Technology, 38, 5
  4. Estes F., 1999, Educational Technology, 37, 5
  5. Glaser, R. (1987). Further notes toward a psychology of instruction. In R. Glaser (Ed.), Advances in instructional psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 1-39). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
  6. Kolb, D. A. (1971). Individual learning styles and the learning process (Working Paper No. 535-71). Cambridge, MA: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  7. Kolb, D. A. & Fry, R. (1975). Toward an applied theory of experiential learning. In C. Cooper (Ed.), Studies of group process (pp. 33-57). New York: Wiley.
  8. Roblyer M. D., 1996, Learning and Leading With Technology, 24, 12
  9. Trafton, J. G. & Reiser, R. J. (1993). The contribution of studying examples and solving problems to skill acquisition. In M. Polson (Ed.), Proceedings of the 15th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1017-1022). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 7,776

Metadata

Authors
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E.
Affiliations
  • Open University of the Netherlands (NL)
  • UNSW Sydney (AU)
  • University of Southern California (US)
Venue
Educational Psychologist
Published
2006-06
Volume
41
Issue
2
Pages
75-86
ISSN
  • 0046-1520 (ISSN-L)
  • 1532-6985
OpenAlex
W1976637107
Cited by
7,776
References
140
Citations by year
2026: 705 · 2025: 534 · 2024: 429 · 2023: 407 · 2022: 394 · 2021: 458 · 2020: 519 · 2019: 457 · 2018: 431 · 2017: 387 · 2016: 446 · 2015: 428 · 2014: 388 · 2013: 399 · 2012: 376
FWCI
117.72
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Educational Psychologist (publishedVersion)
  • UNSWorks (UNSW Sydney) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • DSpace (Open University in the Netherlands) (submittedVersion)
  • DSpace (Open University in the Netherlands) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • UNSWorks (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Strategies and Epistemologies
Keywords
guided teaching, constructivist teaching, discovery learning, problem-based learning, experiential learning, inquiry-based learning, cognitive architecture, expert-novice differences, cognitive load, prior knowledge, instructional design model

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-11, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-11 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Cited sources are checked with a language model’s help (gpt-6-sol).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review