ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates that recurrent difficulties students encounter in learning subject-matter knowledge can be traced, in part, to assumptions about how students best learn knowledge that significantly shape instructional approaches. First, I review the significant influence of empiricist epistemological assumptions on education, covering student-centred pedagogical principles and instructional methods applied in progressive, constructivist, and conventional education. Empiricist epistemological assumptions presume that students learn best by relying primarily on and directly building upon their existing knowledge, experiences, and reasoning, particularly those familiar from everyday life. These assumptions have shaped pedagogical principles and methods such as relying on students' preinstructional knowledge and reasoning, concrete experiences, direct observations, or concrete visual images for learning. Next, I review evidence that empiricist-informed instructional applications often induce learning difficulties, such as erroneous inferences stemming from students' preinstructional knowledge, difficulty understanding content that diverges from students' prior knowledge, and confusion between concrete supports and abstract concepts. By tracing these difficulties to empiricist epistemological assumptions, this paper employs a genealogical epistemological analysis, which tracks the influence of epistemological assumptions on education across several levels, from pedagogical principles to instructional methods, down to students' learning. This analysis (a) explains the roots of certain learning difficulties and aids in anticipating them, (b) challenges pedagogical approaches by questioning their epistemological foundations, and (c) examines how the influence of problematic assumptions is connected to alignment with internationally promoted educational purposes. The influence of epistemological assumptions on education is significant yet understudied. Thus, the genealogical epistemological analysis proves crucial to critically analyze education.