Alfie Kohn misreads both the science and the spirit of Cognitive Load Theory: what he sees as dogma is, in fact, a model of intellectual humility and instructional precision.
Always appreciate your writing, David. I also appreciate critical debate for the ways it crystallizes my own perspective.
I was a student of Kohn’s perspective on student engagement back in the early 2000s, and I would say the legacy of that still holds in my perspective on teaching and learning - that said, I ALSO believe explicit instruction (and other direct instruction moves) gives students the best shot at the taste of success they need to develop the intrinsic motivation that will sustain their growth in learning.
I will say I do get very frustrated with the “methodical weakness” argument. In my humblest opinion, all of education research has methodical weakness when it comes to applying theories in practice. Theories are underpinnings, and methods are potential actions. “Hard science” requires controlling for variables that make outcomes too decontextualized. All
of it - theory, method, education science - requires contextualization - not blind allegiance.
There is also seemingly as issue with semantics. I’m cautious about applying the term “direct instruction” because of the conjurations that Kohn seems to make about it. He goes with the “passive vessels” argument against the “banking model” of education - assuming that direct instruction means lecture. I would agree with him, and Friere, and so on if I believed direct instruction was lecture. But in my work (in the US, by the way, where standards and high stakes tests are God - and where funding for vulnerable populations continues to be slashed), I do not see the same binary that Kohn does. The kind of instruction that I espouse and peddle to teachers and schools is (in short) clear, structured, and gradually released to student independence - at which point all kinds of inquiry and discovery can happen with the knowledge necessary to do so. And I insist that teachers adjust the “instructional method” to fit their content, student needs, and other contextual factors - and I assist them in doing so. Like you attest, their judgment and ownership is critical.
Perhaps it’s because I left academia to return to the “trenches” of public schools (much to the dismay and pity of many of my IHE colleagues)- and I see and work in schools and with students in places where 100% economically disadvantaged is but one feature - but I must admit I grow weary with the debate for sake of it. Inquiry learning as constructivist method must be constructed from something that many students simply do not have - yet. That’s a reality.
And while we sit around arguing, Rome is burning.
Who is the audience Kohn is after? Who is the audience any of us is after? Who are we trying to convince? One another? How does this translate to meaningful change at the student level? And who is responsible for that? This is my struggle. For all the good work of scholars in education, I’m still most continually struck by how it makes its way to the ones who actually do the work we write about.
You’ve captured, I think, a frustration that many of us feel but don’t always voice: that these debates can become a kind of intellectual parlour game while real students, in real classrooms, wait for us to stop arguing and start helping.
I’m with you entirely on the point about methodical weakness. As you say, all education research faces this problem because the variables in classrooms are messy, human, and entangled in context. We can’t, and shouldn’t, try to control for that in ways that strip out meaning. The best we can do is hold theory lightly and use it as a lens, not a prescription.
Your point about semantics is well made too. The caricature of direct instruction as “chalk and talk” or the banking model is tired and unhelpful. What you describe — clear, structured, well-scaffolded teaching that releases students into independence — is what I suspect most of us mean when we advocate for explicit instruction. It’s not a rejection of inquiry or discovery. It’s a recognition that these only work when students have something to inquire into or discover with. And as you so rightly point out, many of the children we serve start without that foundation.
Your closing questions are the ones that matter most. Who is our audience? What change do we hope for? How does this move from theory to classroom? These are the questions I try, and often fail, to keep in mind in my own work. Thank you for reminding me — and for modelling the kind of principled pragmatism that education so badly needs right now.
There’s an emerging body of evidence to show that load reduction instruction is also good for student motivation and wellbeing. The evidence isn’t just in lab style experiments but correlational, large scale, process product etc. I mean how much more evidence do these people need?
Nice essay! I have read Kohn's critique and agree it has strengths and weaknesses. I wonder sometimes about too harsh a category distinction between biologically primary and secondary knowledge. Certainly we can recognize that the human brain is hardwired for speech, for example, in a way that it is not hardwired for reading, and that the neural circuits for reading have to be built. But, that distinction is not as hard and fast as some seem to suggest. This has been a problem in the adoption of structured literacy. While students who are not explicitly taught probably won't learn to read (although some do), the question of how much explicit teaching is required is an ongoing debate. The amount seems to vary widely. The explicit instruction seems to be more of a launchpad for implicit learning. Some students, who are born with brains primed for reading, take off very quickly with a small bit of explicit instruction and then strengthen the reading circuit through a ton of implicit learning. Mark Seidenberg did a recent talk about this. Other students, whose brains are built with a different structure, seem to need quite a lot of explicit instruction. They get there, and eventually implicit learning takes over, but with a lot more structured literacy. So the biological aspect that you discuss is not the same for all humans. And it is not just a distinction between different kinds of knowledge (indeed biologically secondary knowledge is also built with implicit and inquiry learning at some points), but it is also a distinction between different kinds of brains and different kinds of skills or information. There seems to be a lot of knowledge that falls somewhere in between primary and secondary knowledge, in the messy middle. Just something I have been thinking about especially with regard to the ideal amount of explicit instruction for a classroom setting.
I completely agree that the biologically primary/secondary distinction, useful as it can be, risks hardening into a dogma if we’re not careful. The fact that some children seem to construct functional reading circuits with a minimum of explicit instruction is, I think misleading. Most need structured, painstaking teaching. That said, you’re right to point out that it’s not simply a matter of the type of knowledge, but of the interplay between knowledge type, brain architecture, and learning conditions. I think you’re spot on that what we often see is explicit instruction acting as the spark that enables implicit learning to accelerate but how much fuel that spark needs to ignite seems highly variable.
The idea of a “messy middle” between primary and secondary knowledge is a useful one. We must always remember that *any* attempt to explain reality is a model. As George Box said, “All models are wrong but some are useful.” We should stop looking for neat categories and start thinking in terms of overlapping continua. As you suggest, this has real implications for how we pitch instruction in classrooms, where we’re always trying to hit the sweet spot between efficiency and accessibility.
I’ll look up Seidenberg’s talk — it sounds well worth the time. Thanks again for such a stimulating comment.
I can't claim to really know enough to engage properly in this debate though I know clearly where my instincts lie. One thing I would say is that constructivist, inquiry-led educational experiences may be great (or so I was taught on my PGCE), but they are also extraordinarily hard to create and facilitate effectively. Teachers have limited time and resources, and students may or may not wish to participate as we might like in our constructivist educational experiences. I personally have never seen it work well, but I have seen lots of good direct instruction.
Absolutely. You’ve put your finger on two things that often get glossed over in this debate.
First, the practical difficulty of doing constructivist, inquiry-led teaching well. It’s all very well to argue for rich, student-centred experiences in theory—but in reality, they demand huge expertise, time, and resources. That makes them vanishingly rare. If an approach only works when conditions are perfect and the teacher is exceptional, we can’t call it a robust or scalable model.
Second, the “no true Scotsman” move is telling. When advocates defend inquiry methods by saying, “Well, that’s not real constructivism,” they’re admitting the approach fails under ordinary conditions. That’s not a strength. If direct instruction is easier to learn, easier to replicate, and produces more reliable outcomes—especially for the most disadvantaged students—then the burden of proof lies firmly with those proposing alternatives.
It’s not about dogma. It’s about what works in classrooms with real children and real constraints.
It’s so wonderful to read well-thought analysis of learning and teaching that shows the subtleties and shades that are dependent on circumstances, learner, and teacher. Thank you for posting.
Becoming a reader is a skill with many parts that build upon the last skill. Would you ask the new driver where he wants to go, and just take off down the freeway to that city? No, you start in the empty parking lot, gradually building specific skills, a few at a time, working up to the freeway and the city.
Education is about equity and equity means accepting that the class is filled with variety. That’s why we need a variety of approaches - not one pedagogy. However we also need to know how the pedagogy works. Inquiry based learning needs a scaffold, cognitive theory needs to invite questions. Just as this article states, teaching is about knowing what approach is best for the given context and audience. I recently completed an online course at a reputable American university and everything was inquiry based. I hated it - if I wanted to answer questions on my own I didn’t need to do the course. We benefit and get stimulated from shared expertise.
Absolutely: equity is about doing what’s right for the most vulnerable, not just catering to variety for its own sake. Variety in approach sounds noble, but unless we’re clear about what works for novices tackling biologically secondary knowledge, we risk widening gaps. Inquiry is powerful after secure foundations are laid. Explicit teaching isn’t a straitjacket, it’s the bridge to genuine autonomy. The key is precision, not eclecticism for its own sake.
I am grateful to be reading this article today. In my return to graduate school 30 years later, my assignment is asking which dated learning theory I align with: behaviourism, cognitivism, or constructivism. Yet, these older theories have transformed into Guided Discovery and Direct Instruction. As an educator, these theories are two sides of the same fence. They are both nuanced and share so many of the same features. If we start to notice their similarities or how each serves students at certain stages, can we continue the argument?
A really thoughtful review and rebuttal. I particularly appreciate the way you identify areas of agreement before moving to areas of divergence—an approach too often missing from educational debates.
I share your concern that figures like Alfie Kohn (and others in the inquiry-learning camp) frequently caricature direct instruction as dry, didactic lecturing. This misrepresents both current good practice and even the foundational principles of early Direct Instruction models.
While I agree with many of your defences of Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), I’m not convinced that the Ozcelik et al. (2025) fMRI study definitively supports the claim that “cognitive load is not just a theoretical construct but a biological reality.” The study shows differential blood flow when information is split across modalities or space, but this doesn't quite equate to neural evidence of 'load' as CLT defines it. That said, I do believe the “load” construct has been incredibly valuable pedagogically—helping educators grasp effects like split-attention, redundancy, and expertise reversal.
However, I think there's a growing danger in trying to retrofit CLT—a theory rooted in a now-outdated information processing architecture—onto emerging understandings of how the brain actually works. In my blog https://predictablycorrect.substack.com/p/load-to-prediction-variation-theory , I explore how Predictive Processing and Active Inference (ActInf) provide a more neurally plausible framework. These models don’t rely on metaphors of storage and retrieval but frame the brain as a prediction machine, continuously generating hypotheses about incoming sensory input and updating these in light of prediction errors.
This framework can, I think, offer a more coherent account of the mechanisms underlying the “effects” described by CLT. It also offers a more elegant explanation of why Direct Instruction—when structured to minimise uncertainty and optimise precision—can be so effective. It aligns with the idea that instruction works best when it reduces prediction error and helps students construct a more stable and generalisable generative model of the world.
Always appreciate your writing, David. I also appreciate critical debate for the ways it crystallizes my own perspective.
I was a student of Kohn’s perspective on student engagement back in the early 2000s, and I would say the legacy of that still holds in my perspective on teaching and learning - that said, I ALSO believe explicit instruction (and other direct instruction moves) gives students the best shot at the taste of success they need to develop the intrinsic motivation that will sustain their growth in learning.
I will say I do get very frustrated with the “methodical weakness” argument. In my humblest opinion, all of education research has methodical weakness when it comes to applying theories in practice. Theories are underpinnings, and methods are potential actions. “Hard science” requires controlling for variables that make outcomes too decontextualized. All
of it - theory, method, education science - requires contextualization - not blind allegiance.
There is also seemingly as issue with semantics. I’m cautious about applying the term “direct instruction” because of the conjurations that Kohn seems to make about it. He goes with the “passive vessels” argument against the “banking model” of education - assuming that direct instruction means lecture. I would agree with him, and Friere, and so on if I believed direct instruction was lecture. But in my work (in the US, by the way, where standards and high stakes tests are God - and where funding for vulnerable populations continues to be slashed), I do not see the same binary that Kohn does. The kind of instruction that I espouse and peddle to teachers and schools is (in short) clear, structured, and gradually released to student independence - at which point all kinds of inquiry and discovery can happen with the knowledge necessary to do so. And I insist that teachers adjust the “instructional method” to fit their content, student needs, and other contextual factors - and I assist them in doing so. Like you attest, their judgment and ownership is critical.
Perhaps it’s because I left academia to return to the “trenches” of public schools (much to the dismay and pity of many of my IHE colleagues)- and I see and work in schools and with students in places where 100% economically disadvantaged is but one feature - but I must admit I grow weary with the debate for sake of it. Inquiry learning as constructivist method must be constructed from something that many students simply do not have - yet. That’s a reality.
And while we sit around arguing, Rome is burning.
Who is the audience Kohn is after? Who is the audience any of us is after? Who are we trying to convince? One another? How does this translate to meaningful change at the student level? And who is responsible for that? This is my struggle. For all the good work of scholars in education, I’m still most continually struck by how it makes its way to the ones who actually do the work we write about.
Thanks, as always, for a thought-provoking piece.
You’ve captured, I think, a frustration that many of us feel but don’t always voice: that these debates can become a kind of intellectual parlour game while real students, in real classrooms, wait for us to stop arguing and start helping.
I’m with you entirely on the point about methodical weakness. As you say, all education research faces this problem because the variables in classrooms are messy, human, and entangled in context. We can’t, and shouldn’t, try to control for that in ways that strip out meaning. The best we can do is hold theory lightly and use it as a lens, not a prescription.
Your point about semantics is well made too. The caricature of direct instruction as “chalk and talk” or the banking model is tired and unhelpful. What you describe — clear, structured, well-scaffolded teaching that releases students into independence — is what I suspect most of us mean when we advocate for explicit instruction. It’s not a rejection of inquiry or discovery. It’s a recognition that these only work when students have something to inquire into or discover with. And as you so rightly point out, many of the children we serve start without that foundation.
Your closing questions are the ones that matter most. Who is our audience? What change do we hope for? How does this move from theory to classroom? These are the questions I try, and often fail, to keep in mind in my own work. Thank you for reminding me — and for modelling the kind of principled pragmatism that education so badly needs right now.
There’s an emerging body of evidence to show that load reduction instruction is also good for student motivation and wellbeing. The evidence isn’t just in lab style experiments but correlational, large scale, process product etc. I mean how much more evidence do these people need?
No amount of evidence would be enough. Cf phonics
Nice essay! I have read Kohn's critique and agree it has strengths and weaknesses. I wonder sometimes about too harsh a category distinction between biologically primary and secondary knowledge. Certainly we can recognize that the human brain is hardwired for speech, for example, in a way that it is not hardwired for reading, and that the neural circuits for reading have to be built. But, that distinction is not as hard and fast as some seem to suggest. This has been a problem in the adoption of structured literacy. While students who are not explicitly taught probably won't learn to read (although some do), the question of how much explicit teaching is required is an ongoing debate. The amount seems to vary widely. The explicit instruction seems to be more of a launchpad for implicit learning. Some students, who are born with brains primed for reading, take off very quickly with a small bit of explicit instruction and then strengthen the reading circuit through a ton of implicit learning. Mark Seidenberg did a recent talk about this. Other students, whose brains are built with a different structure, seem to need quite a lot of explicit instruction. They get there, and eventually implicit learning takes over, but with a lot more structured literacy. So the biological aspect that you discuss is not the same for all humans. And it is not just a distinction between different kinds of knowledge (indeed biologically secondary knowledge is also built with implicit and inquiry learning at some points), but it is also a distinction between different kinds of brains and different kinds of skills or information. There seems to be a lot of knowledge that falls somewhere in between primary and secondary knowledge, in the messy middle. Just something I have been thinking about especially with regard to the ideal amount of explicit instruction for a classroom setting.
I completely agree that the biologically primary/secondary distinction, useful as it can be, risks hardening into a dogma if we’re not careful. The fact that some children seem to construct functional reading circuits with a minimum of explicit instruction is, I think misleading. Most need structured, painstaking teaching. That said, you’re right to point out that it’s not simply a matter of the type of knowledge, but of the interplay between knowledge type, brain architecture, and learning conditions. I think you’re spot on that what we often see is explicit instruction acting as the spark that enables implicit learning to accelerate but how much fuel that spark needs to ignite seems highly variable.
The idea of a “messy middle” between primary and secondary knowledge is a useful one. We must always remember that *any* attempt to explain reality is a model. As George Box said, “All models are wrong but some are useful.” We should stop looking for neat categories and start thinking in terms of overlapping continua. As you suggest, this has real implications for how we pitch instruction in classrooms, where we’re always trying to hit the sweet spot between efficiency and accessibility.
I’ll look up Seidenberg’s talk — it sounds well worth the time. Thanks again for such a stimulating comment.
Here you go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfeFw1ki2bU&t=2861s
I can't claim to really know enough to engage properly in this debate though I know clearly where my instincts lie. One thing I would say is that constructivist, inquiry-led educational experiences may be great (or so I was taught on my PGCE), but they are also extraordinarily hard to create and facilitate effectively. Teachers have limited time and resources, and students may or may not wish to participate as we might like in our constructivist educational experiences. I personally have never seen it work well, but I have seen lots of good direct instruction.
Absolutely. You’ve put your finger on two things that often get glossed over in this debate.
First, the practical difficulty of doing constructivist, inquiry-led teaching well. It’s all very well to argue for rich, student-centred experiences in theory—but in reality, they demand huge expertise, time, and resources. That makes them vanishingly rare. If an approach only works when conditions are perfect and the teacher is exceptional, we can’t call it a robust or scalable model.
Second, the “no true Scotsman” move is telling. When advocates defend inquiry methods by saying, “Well, that’s not real constructivism,” they’re admitting the approach fails under ordinary conditions. That’s not a strength. If direct instruction is easier to learn, easier to replicate, and produces more reliable outcomes—especially for the most disadvantaged students—then the burden of proof lies firmly with those proposing alternatives.
It’s not about dogma. It’s about what works in classrooms with real children and real constraints.
It’s so wonderful to read well-thought analysis of learning and teaching that shows the subtleties and shades that are dependent on circumstances, learner, and teacher. Thank you for posting.
Becoming a reader is a skill with many parts that build upon the last skill. Would you ask the new driver where he wants to go, and just take off down the freeway to that city? No, you start in the empty parking lot, gradually building specific skills, a few at a time, working up to the freeway and the city.
Fantastic essay, David. Thank you for sharing. I read Kohn's essay first and then again after reading yours and it was a very effective rebuttal.
Education is about equity and equity means accepting that the class is filled with variety. That’s why we need a variety of approaches - not one pedagogy. However we also need to know how the pedagogy works. Inquiry based learning needs a scaffold, cognitive theory needs to invite questions. Just as this article states, teaching is about knowing what approach is best for the given context and audience. I recently completed an online course at a reputable American university and everything was inquiry based. I hated it - if I wanted to answer questions on my own I didn’t need to do the course. We benefit and get stimulated from shared expertise.
Absolutely: equity is about doing what’s right for the most vulnerable, not just catering to variety for its own sake. Variety in approach sounds noble, but unless we’re clear about what works for novices tackling biologically secondary knowledge, we risk widening gaps. Inquiry is powerful after secure foundations are laid. Explicit teaching isn’t a straitjacket, it’s the bridge to genuine autonomy. The key is precision, not eclecticism for its own sake.
I am grateful to be reading this article today. In my return to graduate school 30 years later, my assignment is asking which dated learning theory I align with: behaviourism, cognitivism, or constructivism. Yet, these older theories have transformed into Guided Discovery and Direct Instruction. As an educator, these theories are two sides of the same fence. They are both nuanced and share so many of the same features. If we start to notice their similarities or how each serves students at certain stages, can we continue the argument?
You might also find this interesting https://open.substack.com/pub/daviddidau/p/ideology-masquerading-as-evidence?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=18455&utm_medium=ios
A really thoughtful review and rebuttal. I particularly appreciate the way you identify areas of agreement before moving to areas of divergence—an approach too often missing from educational debates.
I share your concern that figures like Alfie Kohn (and others in the inquiry-learning camp) frequently caricature direct instruction as dry, didactic lecturing. This misrepresents both current good practice and even the foundational principles of early Direct Instruction models.
While I agree with many of your defences of Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), I’m not convinced that the Ozcelik et al. (2025) fMRI study definitively supports the claim that “cognitive load is not just a theoretical construct but a biological reality.” The study shows differential blood flow when information is split across modalities or space, but this doesn't quite equate to neural evidence of 'load' as CLT defines it. That said, I do believe the “load” construct has been incredibly valuable pedagogically—helping educators grasp effects like split-attention, redundancy, and expertise reversal.
However, I think there's a growing danger in trying to retrofit CLT—a theory rooted in a now-outdated information processing architecture—onto emerging understandings of how the brain actually works. In my blog https://predictablycorrect.substack.com/p/load-to-prediction-variation-theory , I explore how Predictive Processing and Active Inference (ActInf) provide a more neurally plausible framework. These models don’t rely on metaphors of storage and retrieval but frame the brain as a prediction machine, continuously generating hypotheses about incoming sensory input and updating these in light of prediction errors.
This framework can, I think, offer a more coherent account of the mechanisms underlying the “effects” described by CLT. It also offers a more elegant explanation of why Direct Instruction—when structured to minimise uncertainty and optimise precision—can be so effective. It aligns with the idea that instruction works best when it reduces prediction error and helps students construct a more stable and generalisable generative model of the world.
As educators committed to evidence-informed practice, I believe we owe it to ourselves to engage with these emerging, but increasingly dominant models of cognition. I do not envisage them displacing CLT, rather being a better engine/fundamental theory of human cognitive architecture, helping us explain why it works and refine how we teach. You can start this process of engagement by reading my blog https://predictablycorrect.substack.com/p/teachers-are-prediction-error-managers, or watching Royal Institution lectures by Anil Seth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXcH26M7PQM or Andy Clarke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Ghrd7NBtk
Would love to hear your thoughts.