A Brief Comment on Theoretical Extremism

Because this is a textbook concerned with the practical applications of technology, the discussion of potentially relevant theoretical foundations will be brief, narrow and confined to this chapter. While it is important to take a position on what one feels to be significant or important, it does not follow that other positions or ideas are incorrect or harmful. For example, it presently appears popular to attack behavioral views of learning and instructional design. Some seem even to attack technology itself because early developers worked from a behavioral perspective and designed instructional materials based on this particular view of learning and motivation. It is as if the glass, plastic and metal of the machines has been forever contaminated by contact with these ideas.

A more productive metaphor may be to think of the various theoretical positions as the reports offered by the blind men as they first encountered the elephant. Each theoretical perspective tends to argue for a unique view based on the particular problem being fixated. Understanding learning in the context of schools would have to be considered similar to the blind men's task as they attempt to explore an immensely complex and multifaceted elephant. In the entire domain of education, many different things are learned by very different individuals in a great variety of environments. Certainly, some approaches are better than others for some combinations of these factors. However, educators need as many good ideas as possible. Rather than rejecting certain theoretical positions as fatally flawed, it often seems most appropriate to use theoretical positions to generate applications and then to determine which applications seem to work in which situations. Theoretical positions producing no useful applications will not need to be killed, they will die a natural death. When it appears some useful applications follow from a theoretical position, it would also seem useful to adopt a moderate position and recognize no model as a panacea. Rather, advocates of particular approaches should recognize that the world is a complex place and note the circumstances under which the applications they propose seem productive.