Why Instructional Explanations Often Do Not Work: A Framework for Understanding the Effectiveness of Instructional Explanations
The brilliance of this article has perhaps already trickled down into teaching methods of situationally-aware teachers. Marc Prenksy (Links to an external site.), in his discerning Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning (2010) (Links to an external site.), no doubt was aware of this research Professors Wittwer and Renkl. An incredibly astute look into teaching the children of the Millenium - take a look at it!
I believe that the most markedly brilliant insight of their guidelines is:
"Instructional Explanations Should Be Adapted to the Learner's Knowledge Prerequisites" (Wittwer & Renkl, 2008, p. 51)
While this recognition comes to thoughtful teachers, I believe, after a few years in the field, not all teachers are aware of the true force that "adaptive teaching for learning" has in the classroom (Wittwer & Renkl, 2008, p. 51). With that said, it must be acknowledged that with an average teacher's time and resources, the possibility of adapting to each child - in the way that current algorithms applied by companies such as Amazon and Netflix, not to mention Google Search, predict what the customer is looking for - is hampered by class size and traditionally organized subjects, i.e. 45 minutes for science, 45 minutes for math, 45 minutes for English, among other constraints.
Therefore, as the good doctors shrewdly point out, this is where "computer-based learning environments, so-called intelligent tutoring systems" come in (Wittwer & Renkl, 2008, p. 52). This is much more eminent to the average consumer today than it was in 2008, and so, bravo to our two German researchers for their incredible foresight.
Individualization, through e-learning modules (with their cool "choose-your-own-adventure" pathways!) and services such as Khan Academy (Links to an external site.), is the way all will learn in the very near future. The ability to design virtual "cognitive apprenticeship[s]" is imminent - and, indeed, one of the great objectives of my own company (Wittwer & Renkl, 2008, p. 52). Further down the page, the paper provide the evidence. When researchers provided tutors with "explicit information regarding the tutee's understanding prior to tutoring," outcomes where much better than the traditional alternative (Wittwer & Renkl, 2008, p. 52). This has been an important method employed by Montessori schools for a hundred years, where learners stay with the same teacher for three years and get to pass on portfolios to the coming teacher.
Again, with that said, I'm not certain our current established public school system is capable of the same feats that Google and Amazon (and even Montessori Academies) seem to master effortlessly. Of course, the analogy breaks down as these companies are only using prior knowledge to predict possible needs, wants, and desires of individual customers. I believe, though, that an innovative platform could be created to facilitated this kind of learning (perhaps it is already in existence at very high-end learning academies!).
And, though these concepts have become an intuitive part of my classroom organization, curriculum and instructional design, I greatly appreciate the reminder!
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