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Paradigms Regained: Toward Integrating Objectivism and Constructivism in Instructional Design and the Learning Sciences

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Abstract

This article proposes a model that integrates the traditionally conflicting objectivist and constructivist approaches to instructional design. I argue that these two approaches are complementary rather than oppositional. I present and analyze two learning programs in order to show how learning events can contain both objectivist and constructivist elements. By plotting the two approaches at right angles to one another, I produce four quadrants which I then discuss and explain. What fallows after that is a discussion of comments that were received from members of a prominent instructional technology mailing list about the feasibility of the model. Finally I present two case studies. The first describes a two-day workshop that was designed to be high on both axes, while the second shows how the model could be used as a decision-making tool. Initial findings suggest that it is both feasible and useful to plot objectivism and constructivism at right angles to one another rather than at opposite ends of a continuum.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria, Pretoria

    Johannes Cronjé (Prof)

  2. University of Pretoria, Groenkloof Campus, 0002, Pretoria, Republic of South Africa

    Johannes Cronjé (Prof)

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  1. Johannes Cronjé
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Cronjé, J. Paradigms Regained: Toward Integrating Objectivism and Constructivism in Instructional Design and the Learning Sciences. EDUCATION TECH RESEARCH DEV 54, 387–416 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-006-9605-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-006-9605-1

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