This paper highlights eight topics cogent to psychologically enlightened instructional theory. Discussed issues include: (1) a multivariate model of man, (2)American school's cultural heritage, (3) the limitations of scientific reductionism, (4) developmentalism in school learning, (5) individual differences, (6) decision-oriented instructional research, (7) teacher education, and (8) the separation of learning theory from instructional theory. Implications for future instructional theorizing are offered.
Instructional practice means school learning and involves at least affective and cognitive behavior. Instruction involves curricular planning and execution mostly by teachers and learning mostly by children. In such a grandiose endeavor, instruction could be supported by grand theory, but it rarely is. Instruction offers little global or elegant theorizing beyond prolonged testimonials. Change is imminent, I hope.
Physicists and chemists -classical scientists -expect much of their theories. American human psychologists placate themselves readily with resigned optimism -human psychology is so difficult to understand -and thereby expect much less of theories. Ideal scientific theories are conceptual gtiides to understanding novel problems, data yet uncollected, or challenging rationale.
Theory is a two-part conceptual vehicle linking substantive questions on one shore, to data-based revolutions on the distant shore. According to Cornfield and Tukey's (1956) simile, the expanse between shores is transversed by crossing two bridges which join on a "movable" island about midway. The first bridge is the statistical span; the second one is termed the subject-matter span.