Instructional Design Models

Instructional Design Models

I’ve always enjoyed B.F. Skinner because he was such a character. My psychology professor in college was a pure behaviorist and he even found a textbook for us that was constructed using behaviorist principles, like immediate positive reinforcement.

I had worked as a waiter for the two summers prior to taking Pysch 101. Consequently, the one exam question that I remember from that course was:

I go to the same restaurant for dinner twice a week and always have the same waiter. How would I assure the best service from the waiter?

1. not tip him at all
2. tip him each time I dine at the restaurant
3. tip him only occasionally

I knew that to answer the question properly, I had to circle ‘C’ because, according to Skinner, intermittent reinforcement would elicit the best service. But, I also knew, from my summer waiter jobs, that it wouldn’t be long before the professor would have a bowl of hot soup fall into his lap. So it was with some interest to learn that Skinnarians still roam the earth.

However, I do find myself returning again and again to our class discussion board to see if someone has responded to my entries. It really doesn’t bother me when an entry is not commented upon, but when it is…oh, boy! Intermittent reinforcement. I feel like a pigeon pecking on that lever just waiting for a little morsel to come rolling my way. So, if the blogisphere continues to grow and we introduce discussion boards and blogs into the educational process and endorse social networking as a way to aggregate knowledge: Are teaching students a new way to learn or are we conditioning students to become so attached to the web that they become a character out of William Gibson’s Neuromancer?

Behaviorism acts on what is objectively observed, not what meaning is given to what is being observed. The cognitive theories, on the other hand, look into what the mind is thinking during a certain act/action. A behaviorist would be interested in observing a thirsty person grabbing a bottle of water as a reaction to the person’s thirst. A cognitive theorist would be interested in understanding why the thirsty person chose a blue bottle of water as opposed to a clear one.

The university that I attended for graduate work in American Civilization was known for its strong anthropology and linguistic departments. The strength of those departments influenced the orientation of the American Civilization department away from the traditional American Studies History/Art History/Literature route toward a distinctive cognitive anthropological bent. I have adopted that approach in teaching American History and even in teaching Art to my high school students. I do not teach events for the sake of teaching the events themselves but as markers for the ideas that either shaped the events or evolved from them. In my art classes I teach art as a language where the viewer perceives an emotion or thought from the image that is created; it is important for the artist to master the language in order to convey the desired thought or emotion. Relative to that, one of my favorite all-time books is E.H. Gombrich’s Art and Illusion. Gombrich approaches the psychology of perception from an art historical perspective as opposed to Rudolph Arnheim’s approach to perception of art from a psychological perspective (Art and Visual Perception).

Around the time I was reading Gombrich, I had a girlfriend who would grind her teeth in the middle of the night and wake me up in the process. I decided to employ a distinctively behaviorist approach to the problem. Every time I heard her grind her teeth, I’d poke her. I did this for months expecting the negative conditioning to eventually work. Last time I saw her I noticed that she managed to reverse all of the orthodontic work that her father had invested in. The behavioral approach didn’t work. And I can only wonder what was going on in her head that had caused that nightly vent of anxiety.

A New Pedagogy?

I think that Will Richardson is a very smart guy. But he’s got it all wrong when it comes to technology restrictions and filters in schools. Computer restrictions are good for students. It makes them work harder to find work-arounds. It’s a teaching tool.

Whenever the school’s filter blocks a site that I try to access, I just ask a student for the work-around. Any student. I don’t know when the last time Richardson taught teenagers. The best way to motivate adolescents to do something is to tell them they can’t.

In fact, I am tempted to propose to Kestrel’s administration that the school change its No Smoking policy to: “Instead of getting some exercise and walking all the way around the corner to smoke, please feel free to light up on school grounds so that you can help put money into the pockets of our local merchants and large multinational corporations, and, ensure that our health care industry remains the most robust and profitable in the world.”

A little bit further down in his blog, Richardson writes of the reaction of a portion of the public to Obama’s speech to school children (even before he gave it), and the marginalization of the nation’s schools in the education of the nation’s youth in various areas. I believe that point that Richardson failed to make is the importance of exposing students to different points of view. Of course, as many had known, the President’s speech was not politically motivated or loaded with socialistically charged points of view. But that is not to say, it is wholly American to have our students gain a balanced picture of the world by exposing them to various perspectives and points of view. And, ironically, it was factions on the political right – purportedly defenders of free speech – who were most opposed to the President of the United States addressing the nation’s children.

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy

Students, in order to function as responsible adults, must learn to think critically. I attempt, especially in my American History classes, to create a scaffolding for the students to build upon, for critical thinking and analysis.

Richardson (pp.10-13) notes the dangers of students landing on inappropriate sites and revealing personal information. However, another danger in this read/write universe in which our students are immersed, is accepting as the truth factually incorrect and politically loaded material, that is frequently presented in slick legitimately-looking packaging.

If people take information presented to them, in our media rich environment, at face value, they may loose their ability to see a situation objectively, and, consequently, formulate an opinion based upon incorrect facts. Many of my students last fall, for example, were supporting John McCain for President primarily because they believed that, were Obama elected, he would take away their guns. Certainly, there were enough valid justifications to support the Republican candidate without a specious reason concocted to rally support of gun owners; but how were the high school students to know?

I teach students to question everything they read on the web, hear on the radio, and watch on television. Students learn the difference between editorials and news reports and the publications that will provide them with unadulterated factual material.

Further, I make the effort to have American history synthesized and integrated with current events so students see the relevance of the past to their present. An example was a class discussion last fall of Roe vs. Wade following a discussion of the Supreme Court decision in a televised Presidential debate. The emotional class discussion that followed covered the rights of the individual as guaranteed by the Constitution, the power of the Supreme Court, and such provocative ideas as when does life begin. I believe that our readings in the area, and the thoughtful class discussion, gave the students a realization that issues have more depth to them than the buzz phrases associated to them; that questioning issues and opinions, and digging to find the underlying facts and philosophies will enable the students to make their own educated decisions on any issue.

Initial Meeting

Hello, this is my first blog post