Philosophical Perspectives

INTRODUCTION 

      Theoretical perspectives such as behaviorism, cognitivism, cognitive constructivism, sociocultural/historicism, and situativity theory provide frameworks for describing learning and designing instruction. Finding roots in philosophy, these perspectives differ with respect to their ontological and epistemological assumptions. Learning theories and instructional theories are developed and linked to a particular set of assumptions, supposedly consistent with one of the theoretical perspectives. Duffy and Jonassen (1992) argued that instructional strategies and methods are clearly influenced by the philosophical assumptions and that theories of knowing and learning are implicit in the instructional design. If not implemented entirely by a cookbook approach, then when situational variables require some decision on the part of the educator an underlying set of assumptions (whether they be tacit or explicit) will drive the decision (Barab and Duffy, 2000). It is inconceivable that a teacher or instructional designer would advocate a particular lesson or activity without at least a tacit theory of how students think and learn. In the literature, we see various classifications for these different perspectives; for example, Greeno et al. (1996) described behaviorist/empiricist, cognitivist/ rationalist, and situative/pragmatist-sociohistorical perspectives. Prawat and Floden (1994) used worldviews to define their classifications: mechanistic (including information processing approaches), organismic (including radical constructivism), and contextualist (including social constructivism). Wood (1995) grounded his categories in the application of learning theory to technology: Skinner and neo-behaviorism, Piaget and constructivist theory, Vygotsky and social constructivism and situated cognition. Unfortunately, when considering theoretical perspectives and the learning theories that have developed within them, it is not always clear what the underlying philosophical roots are. In fact, it becomes confusing when considering the descriptions from authors distinguishing differently among theoretical perspectives. Driscoll (1994), for example, stated that Piaget’s developmental theory and constructivism were interpretivist based. Cobb (1994), when distinguishing among the cognitive and socioconstructivists, aligned the cognitive constructivist with the views of von Glasersfeld (1989), who used Piaget as his example; yet, von Glasersfeld described the basis as pragmatist. Greeno and colleagues (1996), Cobb (1994), and Driscoll (1994) placed the socioconstructivist or sociohistorical perspective under the roots of pragmatism as well, calling on the views of Vygotsky. Phillips (1995) distinguished among the various sects of constructivism, placing the perspectives by Piaget and Vygotsky together based on the unit of analysis. Greeno and colleagues (1996) classified constructivism along with cognitivism, finding roots in rationalism. Ertmer and Newby (1993) located cognitivism and behaviorism within the objectivist perspective, with cognitivism as well as constructivism being rationalism. To further confound things, Garrison (1995) equated contemporary social constructivism with what he defined as pragmatic social behaviorism based on the work of Dewey, indicating a relationship between constructivism and adaptations of behaviorism. Garrison also stated that situated cognition (classified within the situative/pragmatist-sociohistoric category by Greeno et al., 1996) has made an important contribution to social constructivism. Greeno (1998) stated that the situative perspective could subsume both the behaviorist and the cognitivist perspectives. Whereas Prawat and Floden (1994) combined social constructivism and situativity perspectives, Derry (1992) distinguished between constructivist and culturally situated learning views. Among situated perspectives, Lave (1997) further divided what she termed cognition plus, interpretivist views, and her situated social practice view. What factors are being used to distinguish the above theoretical perspectives? Epistemological or ontological assumptions? For seasoned theorists in the field, these distinctions may be trivial to sort out, or maybe some believe that these distinctions have little practical significance. For those beginning their scholarship in the field, confusion seems to reign. Further, for those interested in designing practical applications of instruction and seeking the grounding that a theoretical foundation can provide, it may be difficult to understand the foundation on which they are building. It is in response to these questions, and with the goal of providing sharper boundaries among these categories to inform learning architects, that we have written this chapter. We describe theoretical perspectives as subsumed under five categories and clarify these categories by defining the mind/body relations, epistemology, ontology, and the unit of analysis. Then, we turn to the instructional implications of these five categories. It is important to recognize that these distinctions are situated within the context of providing sharper boundaries and stimulating discussion. As such, we have drawn lines among perspectives that may seem overly defined and may not even exist within other contexts and for other purposes; for example, some theorists would not separate situativity and constructivist perspectives or would not build connections between objectivism and cognitivism. In writing this paper, therefore, we have made epistemological and ontological commitments—a process that we suggest is useful for instructional designers and educational psychologists to undertake. This is not to imply that we have simply constructed these distinctions based on our fancy; in fact, we have aligned each conjecture with citations from colleagues in the field, stacking our allies if you will (Latour, 1987). Our hesitancy in forwarding these categories is that readers will take these brief and overly simplified categories as fixed and rigid rules or, even worse, as substitutes for involved study of the particular philosophical works discussed. It is our intention that these categories should not be used for compartmentalizing but should serve as a backdrop for continued discussion and for broader discourse among our colleagues.