Drawing parallels between designing and teaching, this paper reviews current thought about teaching and teacher thinking, illustrates possibilities for research on studio teaching, proposes recommendations for design instruction improvement, and analyzes reasons for teachers' selective adoption of new ideas about teaching using the Portsmouth Design Group's model. Many and often conflicting conceptions of instruction are reviewed, summarizing what instruction entails, including the mental activities that occur when one is instructing. Two instances of research on studio instruction are presented, offering examples of the kinds of findings the systematic scrutiny of architectural teaching might bring. The paper's concluding section illustrates questions that might be explored and resistance to new ideas that must be overcome if studio teaching were more empirically addressed. A list of 27 references is appended. (Author/JD)