Having worked in the area of psychology in learning, I find the idea that the concept of "there is a right answer or an expert with the right answer" being completely wrong, somewhat discomforting. In the world of education today, the most common mantra that I hear is that there is no right or wrong way to teach people. Coming from a psychological background, statements like that are simply false. There are numerous right ways to foster learning, but there are just as many wrong ways to do it, and they are as common in education as they are in workplace training.

There are numerous psychological principles about how to foster learning, based on robust and sound research, that are routinely ignored by practitioners. An example is the principle of empowerment leading to increased motivation to learn. This is a basic principle that I see ignored in the effort to control the learning process. Another principle is that people need to both believe that they can succeed at the learning task, and believe that it will be useful to them in accomplishing their long term goals in order to be motivated to learn. On the cognitive side, educational or training designers routinely ignore the principle of cognitive overload when putting together materials or designing learning modules.

The idea that there are no right answers suggest that there are no correct principles, and I think that is the wrong message to send out.