Achieving an adaptive learner

This essay was invited upon the receipt of the American Psychological Association Division 15’s Career Achievement Award for Distinguished Psychological Contributions to Education in 2021. I propose that modern education should prepare students to continue learning so they can adapt to changing times, circumstances, and knowledge bases. A key step in adaptation is recognizing that there is something new. I review evidence from three sets of previous studies that show traditional instruction succeeds in helping students complete routine tasks but falls well short of preparing students to learn from new information and adapt it to novel situations. I try to understand these results from three levels of analysis: The overarching goals of instruction; the psychological assumptions underlying the instruction; and the in situ demands and natural responses of classroom learners. Given these analyses, I motivate four instructional design principles that emphasize helping students innovate new ideas and solutions, which in turn, leads them to focus on new information and prepares them to adapt and learn from future situations.