Draft:Paul A. Kirschner

Paul A. Kirschner (born December 3, 1951) is an educational psychologist and instructional designer, mostly associated with the Open University in the Netherlands. He studies how people of all ages learn and how educators can design, develop, and deliver instruction in such a way as to support them doing so effectively, efficiently, and enjoyably. .

Kirschner's work is focused in three areas. The first is bridging the gap between work in academia to practice and making the application of “evidence-informed practices” mainstream in educational institutions. The second is against the myths and urban legends and those who promote these ideas that influence education leading to poorer education, teaching, and learning. The third is against so called ‘progressive’ approaches to teaching and learning such as minimally guided, constructivist, discovery, problem-based, and inquiry teaching and learning.

Based on his own research and that of others in the field, Kirschner has driven evidence-informed methods and techniques to teachers, educational developers, principals, school administrators, educational policy makers and politicians. He has written scientific articles (in peer-reviewed journals), articles, and columns in professional journals, and books in both English and Dutch. Along with his teaching responsibilities, he gives lectures and master classes on a myriad of subjects in education. His blog 3-Star Learning Experiences, co-written with his former student, Mirjam Neelen, cites research-based outcomes.

His areas of research and specialty include :
 * educational research
 * learning and instructional design
 * lifelong learning
 * computer supported collaborative learning
 * designing electronic and other innovative learning environments
 * open educational resources
 * media-use in education
 * development of teacher extensive (distance) learning materials
 * use of practicals for the acquisition of cognitive skills and competencies

Biography
Born and raised in the Bronx, New York (USA), Kirschner graduated from the State University of New York at Stony Brook (USA) with a bachelor in psychology and certification to teach mathematics, biology, and general science at the secondary school level. He taught middle school in late 1972. He left New York in 1973 and went to the Netherlands. He worked as a chef, spent time as a carpenter, and traveled through India before going back to university (University of Amsterdam) for a master’s degree. He graduated with a master (1978) in educational psychology with the specialization 'Text Characteristics and Learning Processes'.

Kirschner spent 36 years at the Open University in Heerlen, The Netherlands, ending his tenure there as University Professor of Educational Psychology. In his first years at that university he received his PhD (Friday, December 13, 1991) with a thesis on practicals (laboratories) in higher science education geared towards achieving complex cognitive skills. He currently holds the title of Professor Emeritus. He also worked as a professor at Maastricht University and Utrecht University and was a visiting professor at the Universtitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Cataluña, Barcelona, Spain) and Oulun Yliopisto (University of Oulu, Finland).

Today, Kirschner runs his own consultancy under the name, kirschner-Ed. He continues to teach and carry out research as a guest professor for Thomas More University of Applied Sciences at the Expertisecentrum Onderwijs en Leren (Expertise Centre Education and Learning).

He is a Research Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, Fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, and Research Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Science. He is a past President (2010-2011) of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (2010-2011) and former member of the Dutch Educational Council and the Scientific-Technical Council of the Foundation for University Computing Facilities (SURF WTR)

He is chief editor of Journal of Computer Assisted Learning and commissioning editor of Computers in Human Behavior. He has also published more than 350 scientific articles as well as many popular articles for teacher journals. He is principal author of How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology, How Teaching Happens: Seminal Works in Teaching and Teacher Effectiveness and What They Mean in Practice , and co-author of Evidence Informed Learning Design , Urban Myths about Learning and Education and More Urban Myths about Learning and Education as well as of Ten Steps to Complex Learning , and editor of two other books (Visualizing Argumentation and What we know about CSCL ).

Personal Life
Kirschner has been married to Catherine Josephine Broekhuizen since 1976. The two have four children and five grandchildren.