Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? Except that it’s not. It might seem counter-intuitive, but too much instruction can actually be a bad thing. But before I explain why, let’s clarify what I mean by the term instruction. Simply put, instruction refers to any kind of teaching or guiding behaviour. This could be an explanation, an example, feedback or even a prompt. Now, you might be thinking, what’s wrong with providing plenty of instruction to support people as they learn? Surely, more is better? Not necessarily.
The problem with too much instruction is that it can foster a kind of instructional dependence. In other words, a dependence on instruction. But what’s wrong with that? Well, the problem is that, if we’re constantly being told what to do, or how to do something, then we’re not developing our ability to figure things out for ourselves. And it’s this ability to figure things out for ourselves that is a crucial element of learning.
But that’s not all. If we’re constantly being provided with instruction, then we’re also not being given the opportunity to engage in productive failure. Productive failure refers to the kind of failure that we experience when we’re trying to figure something out, but we’re not quite getting it. This kind of failure is important because it helps us to learn and understand things more deeply.
When we’re constantly being provided with instruction, we don’t have the opportunity to engage in this kind of failure. And this means that we don’t learn and understand things as well as we otherwise might. So, what does this mean in practice? It means that we should provide less instruction and allow people to figure things out for themselves.
In practical terms, this might mean just providing the minimum amount of instruction necessary to get someone started, and then letting them work things out for themselves. Or it might mean withholding instruction for a little while, to allow people to try and work things out on their own. What we should avoid, however, is filling up all the available space with instruction. Instead, we should let people do the heavy lifting and allow them to learn for themselves.