Instructional theory

An Instructional theory is "a theory that offers explicit guidance on how to better help people learn and develop."[1] Instructional theories focus on how to structure material for promoting the education of human beings, particularly youth. Originating in the United States in the late 1970s, instructional theory is typically influenced by three general influences in educational thought: the behaviorist, the cognitive, and the constructivist schools of thought. Instructional theory is heavily influenced by the 1956 work of Benjamin Bloom, a University of Chicago professor, and the results of his Taxonomy of Education Objectives — one of the first modern codifications of the learning process. One of the first instructional theorists was Robert M. Gagne, who in 1965 published Conditions of Learning for the Florida State University's Department of Educational Research.

In the context of the modern use of electronic educational technology (also called e-learning), a major discussion in instructional theory is the potential of learning objects to structure and deliver content.[2] A stand-alone educational animation is an example of a learning object that can be re-used as the basis for different learning experiences. There are currently many groups trying to set standards for the development and implementation of learning objects. At the forefront of the standards groups is the Department of Defense's Advanced Distributed Learning initiative with its SCORM standards. SCORM stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model.

Definition

Instructional theory is different than learning theory. A learning theory describes how learning take place, and an instructional theory prescribes how to better help people learn.[1] Learning theories often inform instructional theory, and three general theoretical stances take part in this influence: behaviorism (learning as response acquisition), cognitivism (learning as knowledge acquisition), and constructivism (learning as knowledge construction).[3]

Critiques

Paulo Freire's work appears to critique instructional approaches that adhere to the knowledge acquisition stance, and his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed has had a broad influence over a generation of American educators with his critique of various "banking" models of education and analysis of the teacher-student relationship. http://www.dsa-atlanta.org/pdf_docs/Macedo_intro_POTO.pdf

Freire explains, "Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers,” into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are." http://www.dsa-atlanta.org/pdf_docs/Macedo_intro_POTO.pdf . In this way he explains educator creates an act of depositing knowledge in a student. The student thus becomes a repository of knowledge. Freire explains that this system that diminishes creativity and knowledge suffers. Knowledge, according to Freire, comes about only through the learner by inquiry and pursuing the subjects in the world and through interpersonal interaction.

Freire further states, "In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence. The students, alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence — but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher." Freire then offered an alternative stance and wrote, "The raison d'etre of libertarian education, on the other hand, lies in its drive towards reconciliation. Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students. " http://www.dsa-atlanta.org/pdf_docs/Macedo_intro_POTO.pdf

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Reigeluth, C.M. (1999). What is instructional design theory? In C.M. Reigeluth (Ed.) Instructional design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (Vol. 2, pp. 5-29). Manwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  2. ↑ Wiley, D. A. (2000). Learning object design and sequencing theory. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Brigham Young University. Available: http://opencontent.org/docs/dissertation.pdf
  3. ↑ Mayer, R. E. (1992). Cognition and instruction:O n their historic meeting within educational psychology. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 405-412.

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