Educational Philosophies and Theories.....

Educational Philosophies

a. Constructivism (Rationalism) i. Individual ii. Social iii. Contextualism b. Empiricism (Objectivism) c. Pragmatism a. Communication b. Systems c. Learning i. Behaviorism ii. Cognitive Learning iii. Information Processing d. Developmental i. Piaget ii. Vygotsky e. Information Processing Developmental f. Instructional Why do we need to delve into understanding these philosophies or theories? To begin with, these philosophies or theories are the basis on which any instructional design model is constructed. The foundations of these designs lie in the concepts that are part of these philosophies and theories. Therefore, a better understanding of these concepts will enable you to construct useful and efficient models. Secondly, as a designer there are times when you will need to justify why you have chosen a particular design. If you have a basic understanding of how these philosophies or theories apply to your practical design choice, you will have a better chance of making your point and then, logically defending your design. Finally, in the entire gamut of educational philosophies and educational theories, certain areas are more stressed upon than others. If you have an understanding of these philosophies or theories, you will know why these areas have been highlighted and are more important than the others. I will first begin with the educational philosophies and then move onto the educational theories. There is a very good reading that will be my reference point, its a book called Instructional Design by Patricia L Smith and Tillman J Ragan.
Educational Theories

Educational Philosophies Constructivism Constructivism is part of another philosophy called rationalism. A rationalist philosophy believes that the primary source of knowledge is reason. Reason is the source from where knowledge arises. This knowledge is not transmitted but rather it is constructed. Knowledge helps build a reality for any situation therefore even reality is not discovered but is constructed. Now, where can such an approach be useful where a learner has to construct his or her own reality and build knowledge from reason? To bring terms such as reality and reason into perspective, lets consider a scenario where mechanics with an experience of N number of years on a particular car have to learn the latest software for repairing the cars fuel-injecting system. The reality in this case is the new fuel-injection system and the reason (from where knowledge will arise) is the new training software. The question you need to ask is do these experienced mechanics need an instructor to train them on using this software or are they capable of doing this on their own? In other words, do the learners (mechanics) need an instructor to build their reality or not? The answer depends on which philosophy you follow the radical or the moderate constructivist philosophy. The more radical constructivists would rather have the mechanics learn the software on their own no help required in defining objectives or quantifying any learning outcomes. The mechanics or the learners are free to pursue this software training on their own accord. Moderate constructivists would argue that a skeletal structure of objectives these learners need to cover and learning outcomes required should be defined. Some level of instructional design should help these experienced learners identify when and how knowledge blocks need to be built from reason and then use these blocks as per their own accord to construct their own reality. There are three types of constructivism:

Individual Social Contextualism

Individual Constructivism This philosophy believes that experiences are the building blocks of knowledge that leads to learning. The premise of individual constructivism is:

Knowledge is constructed from experience.

In the realm of learning, meaning is developed on the basis of individual experiences. Learning is an active process. Interpretation of knowledge leads to learning.

For a radical constructivist, every learners experience is individualized. Therefore, it is meaningless to create a specific set of instructions for a group of learners wherein each is building and learning basis his or her own experience. The best way would be to let them interpret the existing knowledge and construct their own knowledge that will lead to learning. Moderate constructivists would have a more liberal approach they believe that not all responsibility of what all learning needs to happen should be on the learner. Rather a blended approach would be batter based on factor pertaining to the learner, tasks to be performed, and the context in which learning takes place. Now would be a good time to go back to the mechanics example I had given earlier and see it in the light of individual constructivism!

Social Constructivism

This was a concept that was expounded by post-revolutionary Soviet psychologist, Lev Vygotsky. As with individual constructivism, social constructivism also believes that a learner constructs his or her own reality, but now its a group of individuals who are working in collaboration to construct multiple realities. This is because learning is now a collaborative process and every learner is bringing his or her own perspective to this learning. Therefore, learning will have multiple perspectives.

From a radical social constructivist point of view, all these multiple perspectives brought forward by the multiple learners in all subjects and in all social settings are equally viable and carry equal weight. Let us give this an instructional point of view. Consider a toddler classroom. There are blocks of the same color and size. Toddlers build or play with these blocks as per their fancy. Now, the blocks can be considered learning and what a toddler (learner) does with the blocks (learning) is based on the toddlers perspective. The teacher cannot pick any single toddlers work of art and hold it supreme. Every perspective for learning is correct and the truth however abstract (toddler's art of work!) carries equal weight. However, it is my belief that the radical point of view cannot be applied to all subjects.

Moderate constructivists believe that in certain situations, some perspectives are more viable than the others. Multiple perspectives of multiple learners condense into a single perspective for facts. One cannot dispute a fact, such as frogs breathe using their skin. The truth about facts is usually non-negotiable. In an instructional setting, it is very much possible and even encouraged to divide learners into groups to facilitate learning. Group learning is very effective in situations where multiple perspectives are required.

Consider a group of instructional designer trainees evaluating the design of an elearning website. Multiple perspectives of these IDs can be very helpful in identifying various areas where the website can be improved and where enhancements can be made. Such an exercise works upon the premise of social constructivism that individual learning occurs when learners are in a group. There is collaboration between learners and learning at all times with the learners negotiating their perspective of learning with other learners who are part of the same group.

This concept of multiple perspectives for a particular learning can also be applied to individual constructivism where a single learner is negotiating her learning or understanding of knowledge to build her own reality. For example, consider a student taking an online course. There is no instructor present but knowledge is being assimilated by the student and is being negotiated at every step to build a reality or a perspective. By negotiation I do not imply alteration of the meaning of knowledge. I merely imply the method used to construct knowledge from the text/graphics on a page to allow learning to take place. Now, individual constructivism becomes part of or rather a subset of social constructivism.

To summarize this, collaborative learning in a given social setting can be very effective and efficient as an instructional design strategy.

For any learning to take place, the learner should be able to connect to the setting in which learning is expected to happen. For example, if you want to teach a child how to ride a bicycle, you cannot show a simulation or a video tutorial. Instead, take her to an open ground and give a real tutorial-- give her a bike, teach her to sit on the seat, then tell her to hold the handles, place her feet on the pedals, and finally start peddling. You can provide assistance by allowing the bike to have training wheels or holding her so she

does not fall off the bike. Now, let her pedal away to glory(figuratively speaking of course!).

In other words, the first precept that contextualists believe in is that learning and assessment should be part of a realistic setting. The second precept is that assessment should be integrated into the learning process and should not be an isolated activity. Learners can relate to tasks that need to be accomplished and then get a fair assessment of how well he or she did if the learning context is close to their real life environment. This type of learning that happens in realistic situations is called authentic learning and the instructions associated to facilitate learning are called anchored instructions (Cognition and Technology Group, 1990; Streibel 1995) as the instructions are anchored to the realistic situation.

Another belief of the contextualists is regarding assessment or testing. Testing should not be oversimplified, even for novice learners. Else they will believe that the concept can only be applied to simplistic situations. Continuing with our bike example, if the child rides only on a leveled ground, she will believe that cycling can only be done if the ground is leveled and without any obstacles, such as stones. So, to test whether she has learnt how to ride, take her to an uphill trail. The uphill ride on a road full of little pebbles and stones will surly test her riding skills in addition to breaking the assumption that only leveled grounds are needed for riding the bike. However, as an instructor, you also need to be careful not to put the learners in difficult situations for assessment purposes before they have mastered the basic skills. By doing so, you risk them losing interest in the learning process entirely. For example, if you let the child start with riding in a difficult terrain, she might not want to ride at all! Let the learners master some basic skills, test them on those skills, and then move towards more difficult and complex testing scenarios. This type of strategy ensures that learners retain interest in the learning process and construct their own reality from the little knowledge blocks that they are assimilating along the way.