It is not clear from these data whether the explicit
approach to teaching problem solving was superior to the
implicit approach, or vice versa. Indeed, such a judgment
may depend on the goals of the instructor. If teaching a
specific heuristic were to result different representation
use on different tasks, the instructor would need to
decide whether that tradeoff was desirable. Without
more specific criteria, it appears to us that both appear to
have been successful in fostering multiple representation
use in solving problems. It is possible that elements of
each course could be usefully combined, as well.