Structuring instruction so it works.
10 topics · 9 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Reducing Behavior Problems in the Elementary School Classroom
Michael Epstein et al. · 2008
A federally commissioned practice guide sets out five evidence-graded recommendations for preventing disruptive behaviour, arguing schools should…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Learning for Mastery
Benjamin S. Bloom · 1968
Argues that most students can master any subject given the right amount of time and the right instruction, so fixed-pace teaching manufactures the…
+1 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving
David Wood, Jerome S. Bruner & Gail Ross · 1976
Coins 'scaffolding' for the way a tutor keeps a task within a child's reach by controlling its difficulty, and withdraws that support as competence…
+5 more at this level
9 works
Michael Epstein et al.
A federally commissioned practice guide sets out five evidence-graded recommendations for preventing disruptive behaviour, arguing schools should identify the specific function a problem behaviour serves rather than reaching for generic discipline.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Benjamin S. Bloom
Argues that most students can master any subject given the right amount of time and the right instruction, so fixed-pace teaching manufactures the achievement gap it then measures.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe
Argues a unit should be planned by first deciding what evidence would prove understanding, then choosing assessments, and only then activities — reversing the order in which teachers usually plan.
David Wood, Jerome S. Bruner & Gail Ross
Coins 'scaffolding' for the way a tutor keeps a task within a child's reach by controlling its difficulty, and withdraws that support as competence grows.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Dedre Gentner
A good analogy works by mapping the relational structure between two situations, not their surface similarities, which is what separates an analogy that teaches from one that merely decorates.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John Sweller & Graham Cooper
Finds novices who study a worked example and then solve a similar problem learn more than those given the same number of problems to solve unaided, because problem-solving consumes the working memory that would otherwise build a schema.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller & Richard E. Clark
Argues that minimally guided instructional approaches ignore how working memory and long-term memory actually interact, and that decades of evidence instead favour explicit, fully guided instruction.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, Ravit Golan Duncan & Clark A. Chinn
Rebuts the case against inquiry learning, arguing that its critics conflate unguided discovery with the extensively scaffolded problem-based and inquiry instruction that the evidence actually supports.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John Hattie & Helen Timperley
Feedback's effect on learning varies enormously by what it addresses, the task, the process, self-regulation or the self, and feedback aimed at the person is reliably the least useful kind.
link checked 17 Sept 2026