Chances are that at some point in your educational career you have asked, or at least wished, that a teacher
would clarify or explain an assignment more fully, and thereby give it more structure or organization. Students’
need and desire for clarity is especially common with assignments that are by nature open-ended, such as long
essays, large projects, or creative works. Simply being told to “write an essay critiquing the novel”, for example,
leaves more room for uncertainty (and worry) than being given guidelines about what the essay should contain,
what topics or parts it should have, and its appropriate length or style (Chesebro, 2003). Students’ need for
structure and clarity varies, furthermore, not only among assignments, but among students as individuals. Some
students desire it more than others, and perform especially well when provided with relatively more structure and
clarity. Students with certain kinds of learning difficulties, in particular, often learn more effectively and stay on
task more if provided with somewhat more explicit or detailed instructions about the specific tasks expected for
assignments (Marks, et al., 2003).
As a teacher, the challenge is to accommodate students’ need for clarity without making guidance so specific or
detailed that students have little room to think for themselves. Carried to a (ridiculous) extreme, for example, a
teacher can give “clear” instructions for an essay by announcing not only exactly which articles to read and cite in
preparing for the essay and which topics or issues to cover, but even the wording of the key sentences in their
essays. This much specificity may reduce students’ uncertainties and make the teacher’s task of evaluating the
essays relatively straightforward and easy. But it also reduces or even eliminates the educational value of the
assignment—assuming, of course, that its purpose is to get students to think for themselves.