Instructional psychology

Instructional psychology is the study of learning processes in educational settings, and of the design of environments for eliciting those processes in view of attaining adaptive competence in subject-matter domains. A theory of learning from instruction involves five components: (1) description of desired end states of instruction; (2) description of initial states of learners prior to instruction; (3) explanation of transition processes from initial to desired states; (4) specification of instructional conditions that promote this transition; and (5) assessment of instructional effects. This article focuses on three components: adaptive competence as end state, constructive learning as lever for the transition to desired end states, and learning environments to promote transition.status: publishe