Lesson 4: Historical Evolution of the Field
Founders of the Field
In the next lessons, you will learn more about theories of learning and instruction that have contributed to the development of the field of Instructional Design and Technology. There are several people who were pioneers and founders of these theories of learning and instruction. Please read short descriptions of each of the founders and then choose one of the founders that you find interesting or that you would like to learn more about.
David Ausubel
He was a cognitive psychologist and developed the theory of meaningful reception learning. In this theory it is assumed that new materials relate to people’s personal backgrounds and what they already know. He also further developed advance organizers to help connect new knowledge with prior learning.
Benjamin Bloom
He was an educational psychologist. Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning was developed under his leadership. This is a taxonomy that classifies educational objectives. He also contributed to the theory of master learning.
Jerome Bruner
He was a developmental psychologist who developed a theory of cognitive growth. He was a pioneer of cognitivist psychology and his views on education had important implications for teaching and learning.
John Dewey
Dewey was a great contributor to educational thinking of the 20th century. He was a pragmatist who saw education and learning as a social and interactive process. He saw schools not only as a place to gain knowledge, but also as a place to learn how to live and believed students should take part in their own learning.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
He was one of the pioneers of learning theory and conducted research on memory. He discovered the forgetting curve, the spacing effect, and the learning curve.
Robert Gagne
He was an educational psychologist who co-developed the systematic approach of instructional design. He is well known for his five categories of learning, eight ways to learn, steps of planning instruction, and nine events of instruction.
Robert Glaser
He contributed significantly to theories of learning and instruction. He was a pioneer in testing and aptitudes and introduced criterion-referenced testing. He also developed individually prescribed instruction and contributed to the theory of adaptive education.
Wolfgang Köhler
He developed one of the first cognitive theories of learning (insight learning) by studying the behavior of apes and contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology.
Robert Mager
He was a great contributor to the field of instructional technology and popularized the use of instructional objectives. He developed the criterion referenced training methodology together with Peter Pipe.
Ivan Pavlov
Pavlov developed the theory of classical conditioning by doing research with dogs. He was one of the main influencers of behaviorism.
Jean Piaget
He was a developmental psychologist who studied children’s development. He identified four developmental stages that children go through. This means that there are things that children cannot understand before a certain age. This implies that instruction must meet the developmental needs of the learner for it to be effective.
B. F. Skinner
He established radical behaviorism. He focused on operant conditioning. In his work, he believed that learning can only be determined by behavioral observations, rather than by what is happening inside the brain.
Edward Thorndike
He was a pioneer in learning theory and behaviorism. He studied adult learning and was one of the first forerunners of active learning. He is associated with connectionism and the law of effect.
Lev Vygotsky
He laid the foundation of sociocultural theory of learning (social development theory). In addition, he developed the idea of the zone of proximal development, which refers to the difference of what a learner can do alone and what he or she can do with help of others.
Assignment 4.2: Founder of the Field Interview
Description
Choose a founder of the field of IDT. You can choose a person from the list or pick another person that contributed to the founding of the field of IDT. Pretend like you are interviewing the founder of the field that you chose during his or her career. You can ask the person any questions, but make sure you at least ask him or her:
- What is the purpose of the research you have been doing?
- What are the contributions of your work to the field of instructional design and technology (or education more broadly)
- How do you think your research will be used in the future?
Type out your interview questions and the hypothetical answers of your founder using approximately 600 to 1200 words. Your interview should contain at least five questions and answers. Whenever you use external sources in your interview, make sure you cite them according to APA style. Your sources should be cited both in the text of your paper and in a separate reference list. For APA guidelines, please refer to the APA Publication Manual or use the Purdue Owl Website as a reference.
Submitting Your Assignment
At the end of this lesson you will submit Assignment 4.1, & 4.2). To recap, these assignments should be prepared in a single Microsoft Word file. At the top of your document you should have the lesson name, and underneath that should be your name, email address, and the date.
Under your last assignment (4.1 ) in your Word file, write “Assignment 4.2” and type out your “founder of the field interview”. When you have completed all assignments of this lesson, save the document as a file on your computer and make sure the file is named “Assignment4”. After you have saved your file, go to the student interface and submit your assignment for grading. Click here if you need additional information regarding submission of your assignment.
Grading Criteria
- The interview contains a minimum of 600 words and maximum of 1200 words. (1)
- The interview contains at least five questions. (2)
- The hypothetical responses by the founder’s responses are well supported by the literature or could realistically align with the person’s thoughts and work. (15)
- Correctly cited sources using APA Style (2)
Points: 20