Discusses the need to develop theoretical models, both behaviorist and constructivist, for distance learning design and methods of assessment. Topics include metaphors; sources of model development and delivery; organization of learning; and sources for research and evaluation, including comparison group research designs and within group variance…

Social and moral development, like intellectual development, is a process by which learners actively construct meaning. Conventional character education, based on behaviorism, conservatism, and religious dogma, assumes that values can be asserted into passive receptacles. To help children develop the capacity for moral deliberation when called…

Examines the relations between research about processes of learning and thinking and educational practices that attempt to achieve that aim. Three research perspectives, behaviorist, cognitive, and situative, that characterize thinking and learning to think differently are discussed. It argues that the situative perspective can provide a framework…

Discusses the profound changes taking place in the field of psychology and suggests that multicultural perspectives and controversies are mediating these changes. Also suggests that a culture-centered perspective for the future will emerge as a "fourth force" to complement and strengthen the three conventional theories of psychodynamism,…

Focuses on constructivism and lists some of the procedures that teachers use to illustrate the constructivist learning model. Describes characteristics of a classroom that is using the constructivist model. First published in 1991. (YDS)

The ordinary-language concept of values has a complex history in psychology and in science generally. The traditional fact-value distinction commonly found in traditional scientific perspectives has been challenged by the varieties of philosophical pragmatism, which have similarities to Skinner's radical behaviorism. Skinner's challenge to the…

The behaviorist world view, influential in many social-science disciplines, is challenged by theories of action. With steady developments in nonbehaviorist thinking and related social-action conceptions, the study of school organizational structure can be transformed into a field centered about the dynamics of individuals' practical actions. This…

While human resource development (HRD), an extension of education, is regarded as a helping profession, industry mandates that HRD contribute to the maximization of organizational outcomes. HRD personnel can easily become demotivated because of dual loyalties. In order not only to avoid stress and demotivation but also to maximize outcomes…

Videodiscs have much to offer in developing the school curriculum, but teachers must use definite criteria in planning teaching-learning situations that will enable students to achieve on an individual basis. Thus, students should find meaning, interest, purpose, provision for individual differences, and a balance among objectives in their…

Education in the United States for most of the last 50 years has built its knowledge base on a single dominating foundation--behavioral psychology. This paper analyzes the history of behaviorism. Syntheses are presented of the theories of Ivan P. Pavlov, J. B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner, all of whom contributed to the body of works on behaviorism.…

This study examined the relationship between teachers' beliefs and instructional practices and the mathematics achievement of their students. Data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) were used to examine whether behaviorist and constructivist teachers had different beliefs about student learning and whether teachers…

Offers a critique of a previous discussion on instructional industrialism in distance education based on instructional design. Topics include the psychological foundations of instructional design, competing paradigms in educational development, behaviorism and cognitivism, theories of learning and the paradigmatic divide, and implications for…

Responds to A. L. Brown's 1994 assertion that behaviorism and most learning and developmental research impede theoretical progress and negatively affect educational practice. The author first discusses how Brown inappropriately uses the most outlandish research and practice in the behaviorist tradition as an excuse to reject behaviorism outright,…

The article responds to three papers (by S. Forness, K. Reid, and W. Kimball and T. Heron) which reacted to two papers by M. Poplin (1988) concerning the reductionist fallacy in learning disabilities and holistic/constructivist principles of the teaching-learning process, with implications for the field of learning disabilities. (DB)

Questions whether materialist pragmatism is more coherent than alternative accounts of educational administration. The criteria provided by materialist pragmatists lack overall coherence; there is no way to choose between first- and second-order theories. Arguments against separation of factual and evaluative realms are unconvincing, and…