Strategy Instruction Research Comes of Age

There is enormous contemporary interest in strategy instruction and in conducting research on this topic, with many researchers attempting to develop strategy interventions for use with both normal and learning disabled populations. Four factors fuel the current enthusiasm: (a) There are now some very convincing information-processing analyses of important educational tasks. (b) There are better models of autonomous cognitive performance. (c) These models of performance have stimulated the development of more complete models of instruction. And (d) Those interested in strategy instruction are becoming sophisticated in the design of experiments that are methodologically sound and conceptually convincing. After reviewing these four influences in the following sections, we argue that complete study of strategy instruction includes research aimed at (a) diagnosing what students do without instruction, (b) determining what they can do when given instruction, and (c) establishing how materials can be adapted to improve performance when inefficient or ineffective student processing cannot be modified by instruction. Such a comprehensive research program requires both laboratory and classroom studies.