Curriculum, Plans, and Processes in Instructional Design

International Perspectives

Norbert M. Seel, Sanne Dijkstra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135627003
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Curriculum, Plans, and Processes in Instructional Design: International Perspectives presents perspectives on the relationship between curriculum research and instructional design, as well as new developments in the use of information and communication technology. In their introductory chapter, the editors provide an overview of the volume and introduce the discussions found in three sections:
*The chapters in Part I (Theoretical Foundations and Innovations) describe and discuss new theoretical and innovative approaches to instructional design that integrate curriculum development with information and communication technologies.
*Part II (Curriculum Development, Instructional Design, and Information Technology) focuses on curriculum development and its impact on models of instructional design.
*Part III (Information and Communication Technology and Instructional Design) addresses the challenge of advancing information and communication technologies for instructional planning and curriculum development. Prominent researchers and practitioners from instructional design, as well as the learning sciences--from both the U.S. and around the world--have contributed to this volume. This volume is a valuable resource for graduate students, scholars, and researchers in the fields of instructional design and educational technology, as well as for those who wish to develop expertise in training in industrial, military, public and academic organizations.

Part I
THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION AND INNOVATIONS OF INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

Sanne Dijkstra
University of Twente, The Netherlands

The content of all the chapters in this part of the volume is concerned with the relation between epistemology and the psychology of learning on the one hand and the design of instruction and use of media on the other. Before I outline the highlights of the content, a framework to discuss the content is proposed.

Technology. A technology is the whole of the science (theory and research methods) that is valid for a domain and of the rules for solving a design problem in that domain in order to realize a public or individual goal. For example, chemical technology comprises the theory and research methods that are valid for the molecules of substances (their structure and their change) and the rules to construct devices and installations for producing substances that will be used for a public or individual goal, such as refineries for producing gas for transport and heating. The development and application of these rules is often labeled engineering.

Instructional Technology. For the description of instructional technology, first a demarcation of the domain should be given. Quite often the label learning is used, but this label does not adequately cover the domain. Actually the domain is the whole (human) organism, both the mind (psyche) and the body together with their physiological and neurological relationships, insofar as the description of its structures and the theory of its changes are relevant for the acquisition of knowledge and skills. The domain comprises many subdomains, such as personality and cognition as well as the neurological and muscular systems, the actions of which are used to infer the existence of these subdomains. The acquisition of knowledge and skills is described as processes of change in these domains for which labels such as insight, thinking, and learning are used. The course and the results of these processes can be inferred from the organism’s actions. I presuppose that the personality directs and controls cognition and learning. Personality features and functions, such as intelligence and motivation, strongly influence (meta) cognition and learning. How do we solve design problems in this quite complex domain, and for which goals? The solution to these problems is the design of a special kind of communication between a student or group of students and an expert in a domain, the purpose of which is to initialize and promote the acquisition of knowledge and skills. This is the enrichment of cognitive constructs and of actions to do in given circumstances. As with all technologies, the general goal has a public and an individual component. A possible ultimate public goal is to maintain and strengthen the group or organization and make it competent to adapt to changing global circumstances (Dijkstra & van Merriënboer, 1997). For students in elementary, secondary, and tertiary education, individual goals will receive priority, such as to understand a concept and how and why this was developed, or to prepare themselves for a profession and career.

Instructional Design. Though human beings are able to develop knowledge and skills without the help of an expert, they usually need help. Because of the enormous amount of information and methods, learning environments and instruction are needed to help the students to structure and understand the information and practice the methods. Instruction is the communication between a student and a teacher (expert), and the rules for how to design and develop this communication are labeled instructional design. It comprises verbal and written communication between students and experts and takes on special forms such as the presentation of information and illustrations. It further comprises the formulation of questions (problems) that the students should solve to develop knowledge and tasks they should execute, individually and in teams, to practice a skill. All this is realized in a special setting, labeled a learning environment, in which the many and sometimes strongly different tasks are assigned to the participants. The content of the communication involves a domain of the arts and sciences or a part of it (object), the conceptions about this, and the representation of both the object and the conceptions in pictures, icons, and symbols (including language). Instructional designers are always confronted with a few problems that are difficult to solve. They have to classify a constantly increasing body of information and methods into categories that the students can and should cognize and integrate. Moreover, they have to design the learning environment and instruction in such a way that for the students the relationship between the depictions and conceptions on the one hand and the “genuine” reality on the other hand will be understood.

General and Specific Design Rules. Some instructional design rules are specific and detailed and lead to learning materials, the content and structure of which are easily recognizable, for example, the designs for learning to read. Others are more general and declared valid for several categories of information and methods. Different general models of instructional designs were proposed, all of which were criticized and sooner or later abandoned. Why? Partly because of the development of new theories of cognition and cognitive processes, especially of thinking and learning, and partly because the results of the use of a particular design or categories of designs were criticized. It is well known that for some students the goals of education are not achieved. Irrespective of the real cause in an individual case, there always has been the assumption that the quality of education and in particular the quality of instruction has to do with these failures and therefore “education has to be improved.” If a new design model or part of it or a new learning environment is proposed it has to be shown that the change of an instructional design will lead to “better” results. In order to show a better result during the past half-century many research projects to study the effects of instructional designs have been done which quite often are characterized by a kind of dichotomy. A few examples are: computer-assisted instruction versus “traditional” classroom instruction, cognitivist versus behaviorist instruction, constructivist versus objectivist instruction, designs that foster “active” learning versus designs that lead to “passive” learning, problem-based instruction versus information presentation, and situated (realistic) instruction versus “abstract” instruction. Always the designs of the first category of the dichotomies are supposed to yield better results than the designs of the second category. The way in which the research is done seldom leads to clear, generalizable results. The general outcome that 50% of the studies provide positive evidence for the assumedly more effective design and 50% do not continues the uncertainties about effective designs. The dichotomies cannot adequately cover the whole instructional designs. Many variables influence the communication. One feature of a subdomain of psychology, or one feature of a (representation on) a medium, or an epistemological point of view may be useful to label a design but cannot cover all the components of the instructional design. Moreover, it is impossible to adequately describe all instructional designs by only one label. More precision is needed (a) based on the circumstance in which the design is useful, (b) in describing the features of the content (subject matter) for which the design is effective, and (c) in formulating the principles for the use of information technologies. If instructional technology is to become an “adult” science of design, such as chemical and maritime technology are, then the evaluation of whole designs in long-term research and development projects is needed (Dijkstra, 2001). The following chapters show the value of different instructional designs and how to integrate them.

THE CONTENT OF PART I

In this part of the volume, the dichotomies for categorizing instructional designs are hardly used. Instead the authors thoroughly describe and discuss the relation between the domains of psychology and epistemology on the one hand and the different categories of instructional designs on the other. About 25 years ago, Glaser, Pellegrino, and Lesgold (1977) concluded, “Cognitive psychology’s findings and techniques have not significantly influenced teaching practices” (p. 495). Now in a scholarly chapter on complex learning environments, based on nearly a hundred articles and chapters by several other scholars in the domain, Pellegrino (chap. 1) shows how in the past 25 years cognitive psychology, instructional design, and information technology influenced each other and developed into an “adult” instructional-design science. Pellegrino first considers the linkages among curriculum, instruction, and assessment and how and why these linkages should be aligned by a central theory about the nature of learning and knowing. He then discusses the results of studies on learning and teaching that revealed three important principles about how people learn. These principles are (a) the influence of existing knowledge structures and schemas, both positive and negative, for the acquisition of new knowledge; (b) the way expertise should be developed; and (c) the monitoring of learning by metacognitive control. Based on these principles that are important for how people learn, Pellegrino brings order to the “chaos” of instructional choices and reassesses choices that are often considered poor ways of teaching. Of course, the principles of how people learn have implications for curriculum, instruction, and assessment and thus for the design of learning environments. Effective learning environments are knowledge centered, learner centered, assessment centered, and community centered. These points of departure are worked out in clear design principles and illustrated with many examples in which the use of media is integrated. This chapter will be a must for all instructional designers.

Seel’s chapter (chap. 2) elaborates model-centered learning and describes the appropriate learning environments. Model-centered learning “gives primacy to students’ construction of knowledge through an inquiry process of experimentation, simulation, and analysis” (p. 51). Seel provides the reader a clear and helpful description of the main concepts of model-centered learning. Among these are the description of concepts such as mental model, schema, and conceptual model. These concepts and others are used to clarify how model-building activities are influenced through instruction and what is the meaning of general paradigms of instruction. Among these are self-organized discovery learning and exploratory learning, externally guided discovery learning and learning oriented toward an expert’s behavior. Seel shows the reader a diagram in which model-centered teaching and learning are integrated. He then discusses the research on instruction for model-centered learning and while doing this he clearly shows the use of teaching methods to build effective learning environments. Modeling, coaching, and scaffolding support receptive meaningful learning. Articulation and reflection are part of metacognitive control. And exploration of new tasks stimulates transfer of knowledge. A special issue that is addressed in this chapter is the assessment of the existence and growth of mental models. Interesting examples of how to do this are provided. Seel finally elaborates the instructional design of model-centered learning environments. The categories he proposes are embedded in a thorough analysis of recent literature.

Jonassen, Marra, and Palmer (chap. 3) first mention a number of special instructional designs that are prototypical examples for “constructive learning.” They provide the reader with short descriptions of “rich environments for active learning,” “open-ended learning environments,” “goal-based scenarios,” and “constructivist learning environments.” Do these special designs achieve the desired goals? Only partly. One of the supposed causes for this is students’ familiar script for school-based learning that is developed after years of practice. Such a script includes listening to lectures, predicting what ideas will be examined on the test, and so on, and is strongly different from the approach in constructivist learning environments. A second cause may be the decrease in motivation when students’ actions in constructivist learning environments do not quickly lead to “correct” answers. And an “important causal factor is the students’ levels of epistemological development relative to the levels of epistemological development required by constructivist learning environments” (p. 78). The chapter then provides the reader with most important information about students’ epistemic beliefs. A person’s epistemological development shows transitions from one stage to another in which the person’s beliefs about epistemological categories such as knowledge and truth change. The level of epistemic belief is most important for the use of constructivist learning environments. The authors propose a “two-way” relation between levels of epistemic beliefs and instruction. They write: “Instructional interventions can have an impact on students’ epistemic beliefs and the students’ epistemic beliefs can affect the success of certain kinds of instruction” (p. 81). For both ways the authors first summarize the small amount of available research literature. They propose that to function successfully in constructivist learning environments, the students should have reached the level of contextual relativism, which means that “most knowledge is contextual and can be judged qualitatively” (p. 79). The students’ learning shows beginning metacogni-tive control. They should, among other requirements, be able to justify their conclusions and beliefs through argumentation. Seven epistemological requirements should be met, which are proposed as entailments and worked out in epistemic orientations required by the learner. Jonassen, Marra, and Palmer finally propose to help learners in reaching the required level of epistemic belief by scaffolding the performance that is required in the constructivist learning environment. This “provides temporary frameworks to support learning and student performance beyond their capacities” (p. 84) and represents “some manipulation by the teacher of the learning system of the task itself” (p. 84). Examples are adjusting the difficulty of the task, providing tools to engage and support task performance, and performing a task or parts of it for the learner. Based on the seven entailments, the authors finally propose detailed means of scaffolding. Among these are well-known instructional designs such as questioning information sources and concept mapping. The authors conclude that the successful use of a constructivist learning environment is dependent on the level of epistemic beliefs and that the development of these beliefs can be scaffolded.

The last two chapters in this part of the volume both report on studies of learning science “by design.” Kolodner and her colleagues (chap. 4) used the ideas of case-based reasoning and problem-based learning in a long-term project on learning physics by design. What does this kind of learning mean? It is a form of project-based inquiry. In the authors’ own words: “In project-based inquiry students investigate scientific content and learn science skills and practices in the context of attempting to address challenges in the world around them” (p. 93). Students learn to investigate as scientist...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• ABOUT THE EDITORS
• INTRODUCTION: INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
• PART I: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION AND INNOVATIONS OF INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY
• PART II: CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT, INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN, AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
• PART III: DELIVERY SYSTEMS, INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY, AND MEDIA IN EDUCATION