Cognitive Flexibility, Constructivism, and Hypertext: Random Access Instruction for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition in Ill-Structured Domains

Introduction: The Complex Context of Learning and The Design of Instruction A central argument of this paper is that there is a common basis for the failure of many instructional systems. The claim is that these deficiencies in the outcomes of learning, are strongly influenced by underlying biases and assumptions in the design of instruction which represent the instructional domain and its associated performance demands in an unrealistically simplified and well-structured manner. We offer a constructivist theory of learning and instruction that emphasizes the real world complexity and ill-structuredness of many knowledge domains. Any effective approach to instruction must simultaneously consider several highly intertwined topics, such as: • the constructive nature of understanding; • the complex and ill-structured features of many, if not most, knowledge domains; • patterns of learning failure; • a theory of learning that addresses known patterns of learning failure. Based on a consideration of the interrelationships between these topics, we have developed a set of principal recommendations for the development of instructional hypertext systems to promote successful learning of difficult subject matter (see Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, and Anderson, 1988; Spiro and Jehng 1990). This systematic, theory-based approach avoids the ad hoc character of many recent hypertext-based instructional programs, which have too often been driven by intuition and the power of the technology