Emergent Trends and Issues of ID

Index: Emergent Trends and Issues of ID

Adaptive Strategies
Advanced Technologies
Constructivist Strategies
Minimalist Instruction
Affective Learning
Systemic Change

Most current ID theories were developed for the industrial-age paradigm of education and training. Just as mass production in business is giving way to customized production (Reich 1991) and mass marketing is giving way to targeted marketing (Toffler 1991), so mass teaching is giving way to personalized teaching. These changes in all of these sectors (and others) are made possible by information technology. Every year teachers are acquiring more and more powerful tools with which to facilitate learning. Those tools require the use of new instructional methods to take full advantage of their expanded capabilities. Hence, ID theories must offer guidance for the use of such new instructional methods. These information-age ID theories are likely to incorporate prescriptions for the use of adaptive strategies, advanced technologies, constructivist strategies, minimalist instruction, and systemic change, to name but a few of the emerging ideas. Each of these will be briefly described.

Adaptive Strategies

Whereas conformity was one of the general characteristics of the industrial age, diversity is emerging as a hallmark of the information age. Different students increasingly have very different learning needs, inter

ests, goals, abilities, prior knowledge, and so forth. It is therefore increasingly important to adapt instruction —both content and methods—to each learner's needs and interests. Advanced technologies are gradually providing more powerful and cost-effective means for such adaptations.

Advanced Technologies

There are two important ways in which advanced technologies are influencing the future development of ID theories: through their use as tutors and tools for learners and their use as tools for instructional designers.

As tutors new technologies offer new capabilities that require new instructional strategies to take appropriate advantage of them. Dynamic media require guidelines as to when and how to use motion in instruction. Interactive media require prescriptions as to what kinds of learner activities to encourage when, and when and how to respond to each kind of learner activity. Massive memory storage capabilities require guidelines as to when and how to utilize them best in instruction. Hypertext and hypermedia require guidelines as to when and how their unique capabilities can best be utilized to facilitate learning. Multimedia, expert systems, artificial intelligence, computer-based simulations, and virtual reality represent but a few of the additional technologies for which guidelines are sorely needed. The increasingly more powerful and cost-effective capabilities of these advanced technologies all require guidelines as to when and how best to use them to facilitate learning.

Constructivist Strategies

Constructivism offers some practical instructional strategies that have much to contribute to the new paradigm of education for the information age. Some of its strategies are fairly uniformly applicable to most kinds of learning, but others are only applicable to higher-level learning in ill-structured domains.

At the heart of constructivism is the belief that each learner must construct his or her own knowledge and therefore that instruction must create an active role for the learner (see, e.g.. Brown etal. 1989, Perkins 1992). It also prescribes that learning should be situated in authentic activities. Slightly less broadly applicable is the prescription that instruction should facilitate the construction of meaning, or sense making. This is accomplished primarily through such strategics as learning in context, modeling, and coaching, but it may not be for all learning situations.

Perhaps the most valuable contributions of constructivism are considerably less broadly applicable: those for facilitating higher-level learning in ill-structured domains. Some useful instructional strategies include: generative tasks, learner exploration, analogical transfer, and the fostering of multiple perspectives.

Minimalist Instruction

Carroll (1990) has developed the idea of "minimalist instruction" for teaching people "what they need to leam in order to do what they wish to do" (p. 3). It is similar to the notions of just-in-time training and on-line help systems. At its heart is the idea of not teaching people things that they do not yet have to know. This seems most appropriate for training situations, such as training people to use desktop computer systems, where it is relatively easy to determine what one needs to leam at a given point in time. Another important aspect of minimalist instruction is "to design instruction to suit the learning strategies people spontaneously adopt" (p. 3) and the relevant knowledge they have already acquired. Both of these require that the instruction be highly adaptive, and utilize advanced technology and some constructivist strategies.

Specific instructional prescriptions include the following. First, all instruction should occur with real tasks that are meaningful to the learner, so that the learner is motivated. Second, the "training wheels" approach should be used so as to pick a version of the meaningful task that is simple enough not to overwhelm the beginner. For example, a real word-processing task might be selected that requires the use of only a small subset of the capabilities of the system. This is similar to the Elaboration Theory's "simplifying conditions method" approach to sequencing (Reigeluth 1992b). Some artificial simplifying conditions can also be instituted, such as disabling certain functions of the system, so that the learner cannot yet make certain types of errors. As the learner progresses, the meaningful tasks become gradually more complex until the learner has mastered all that he or she needs to learn.

Third, the learner should be helped to understand meaningfully what he or she is doing. Reasoning is very important for this process, and the learner's prior knowledge must be diagnosed and utilized. Fourth, reading materials and other passive activities should be reduced to a minimum, and largely replaced with discovery activities. The reading materials should be designed for random access and to be read in any order, and they should have strong linkages to different pans of the real, meaningful task. Fifth, emphasis should be placed on helping the learner to recognize and recover from errors so that errors become triggers for positive learning experiences.

Affective Learning

The affective domain (Krathwohl et al. 1964) has received relatively little attention from instructional theorists, but it is emerging as an important area of human development for the information age. Martin and Briggs (1986) conducted a comprehensive review of ID theories in this domain, and identified three major dimensions that appear to require different models of instruction: attitudes and values, morals and ethics, and self-development. They also identified a variety of other dimensions of the affective domain: emotional development and feelings, interest and motivation, social development and group dynamics, and attributions. The most advanced ID theories are in the dimension of attitudes and values and include the Yale Communication and Attitude Change Program, Dissonance Theory, Cognitive Balancing Theory, Social Judgment Theory, and Social Learning Theory (see Martin and Briggs 1986 for a summary).

One of the most promising new developments in this domain is an ID theory for attitudes being developed by Kamradt and Kamradt (in press). Based on the notion that attitudes have a tripartite composition of feelings, cognitions, and behaviors, they have developed a set of guidelines for systemically influencing all three through a systematic process that moves the learner just outside of his or her comfort zone one step at a time in the direction of the desired attitude. First, role-playing is used to force a new behavior more consistent with the target attitude. This creates a dissonance or discomfort which serves as a trigger event to influence the cognitive element through discussion and persuasion. Finally, reinforcement techniques are used to change the feelings associated with the new behavior and new thinking. After this small shift in attitude has been consolidated, the learner is ready for another round of this three-part strategy. Ethical issues are particularly important in the affective domain, and the Kamradts advocate that no attempts be made to change a learner's attitude without the knowledge and consent of the learner.

Another development in the affective domain is the character education movement, which is concerned with teaching core values developed through community consensus (Huffman 1994, Kirschenbaum 1992, Lickona 1991). Core values may include: self-discipline, empathy, respect, responsibility, trust-worthiness, caring, fairness, loyalty, honesty, love, courage, and citizenship. One key issue is identifying "core" or "consensus" values that address the needs of the local district and community. Another key issue is figuring out the best methods for teaching them. Possible methods include: inculcation, modeling, discussion, role playing, experiential learning, reflection on experiences, integration into the curriculum, peer- and service-oriented programs, and creating an environment that nourishes character-building relationships. This is an important new area that needs and deserves much attention from researchers and practitioners alike.

Systemic Change

It seems highly likely, given the different educational needs of the information age, that ID theories will adapt to meet the needs of a new paradigm of education and training, and that those changes will incorporate the use of adaptive strategies, advanced technologies, constructivist strategies, and minimalist instruction. For a more thorough exploration of what the new paradigm of education and training may be like and why it is needed, see Reigeluth (1996). However, this new paradigm of instruction will be of little value if the larger system within which it is embedded remains rooted in the industrial age. Referring back to Banathy's (1991) four levels of educational (and training) systems (learning-experience, instructional, administrative, and governance), this entry has focused on theory for prescribing the instructional system that will support a new paradigm of learning to meet the radically different education and training needs and conditions of the emerging information society. But unless a compatible paradigm shift is also effected at the administrative and governance levels, the new instructional paradigm will be ineffective and short-lived. Instructional designers and ID theorists alike must begin to view themselves as concerned with educational systems design—spanning all four levels of the system—not just with instructional systems design—focusing on just one of those levels. (For further information, see, e.g.. Reigeluth and Garfinkle 1992.)