Edited on 11th April 2026 — Improve clarity
In the 1960s, Jerome Bruner observed that pedagogy lacked “a theory of instruction as a guide to pedagogy – a prescriptive theory on how to proceed in order to achieve various results.”1 Instead of unified theory, the field was a set of on maxims.
Researchers have since developed instructional techniques which I think would be better categorised as principles than maxims as they’re much less ideologically dependent. However, applying these scientifically tested approaches often feels more like craft than engineering 2.
Bruner, Jerome Seymour. Toward a theory of instruction. Harvard University Press, 1971.↩︎
Koedinger, Kenneth R., Julie L. Booth, and David Klahr. “Instructional complexity and the science to constrain it.” Science 342, no. 6161 (2013): 935-937.↩︎