Philosophical & Psychological Perspectives

Philosophical & Psychological Perspectives Implications for Learning Theory and Instructional Methods

Ontology: What exists in the world; what the mind knows
Epistemology: How the mind knows what it knows
Dualism: A view whereby the knower and what is known exist independently from each other

Ontology: Reality consists of entities and properties that exist independent of human understanding.
Epistemology: To know is to have a mirroring of this world.

Ontology: Reality "of some sort" exists separate from perception and the mind.
Epistemology: To know is to have a correspondence between the world and the mind.

Ontology: Reality exists outside of the individual.
Epistemology: Knowledge builds from experiences/the senses. What is learned comes from interactions with the environment.

Ontology: Reason is the principle source of knowledge.
Epistemology: The ability to reason is applied to the sensory experience that arises in the world, creating the world itself.

Ontology: Reality is psychological.
Epistemology: Knowledge and experience are formed by mental representations.

Ontology: There is no absolute truth to the world; instead, there are individual constructions that are highly dependent on the individual. No intrinsic meaning exists independently of other events.
Epistemology: Meaning is created by the relationships between experiential and physical events.

Neither an Ontology nor an Epistemology
Mutualism instead of dualism
Truth or knowledge is derived from the consequences of interactions among groups of individuals and the artifacts in their environment, both of which create knowledge.

Unit of Analysis: The boundaries of the phenomenon of interest

Learning Theory: A description of how learning occurs within a particular instance.

Learning theories are descriptive.
Example: Schema theory in cognitivism. Learning occurs through accretion, tuning, and restructuring.

Instructional Theory: Identifies the methods to be used for instruction and the situations in which these methods should/should not be used.

Instructional Theories are prescriptive.
Example: Elaboration Theory identifies how instruction should be sequenced so that the learning process can be meaningful and motivational for learning.

Ontology/Epistemology: Objectivism
Unit of Analysis: The individual learner
Dualism Perspective: Monism
Learning Theory: Example - Skinner's Operant Conditioning; Learning is viewed as conditioning, whereby behavior followed by a reinforcer will increase in frequency or probability.
Instructional Theory: Programmed instruction; learning is facilitated by using reinforcement and feedback; content is analyzed and preplanned based on an objective ontology, providing the learner with a direct map of what is to be learned.

Ontology: Objectivism (the world is real and external to the learner)
Epistemology: Rationalism; sees the mind as an information-processing center; the learner's mind organizes, encodes, and retrieves knowledge.
Unit of Analysis: The learner's knowledge structure
Dualism Perspective: Mind/environment
Learning Theory: Example - Asusbel's Meaningful Reception Learning; Focus on organizing information to facilitate its acquisition by the learner; learning is the process of subsuming new meaningful material into this cognitive structure.
Instructional Theory: Content is presented in its final form and the learner needs to internalize the information for later use. Example - Gagné's Conditions of Learning theory described five types of learning capabilities: intellectual skills, verbal information, cognitive strategies, motor skills, and attitudes.

Ontology: Realism (an objective world exists but cannot be directly known)
Epistemology: Rationalism; knowing is in the cognitive activity of an individual as they make sense of the world.
Unit of Analysis: Restructuring of the cognitive structures of the individual; "the quality of individual interpretive activity" (Cobb, 1994)
Dualism Perspective: Mind / Environment
Learning Theory: The world exists, with learning coming from an individual's unique, constructed interpretation of that world; information is not pre-structured and mapped into an individual's mind. Example - Piaget's concept of schemes, where individuals construct their world by attempting to assimilate experiences into existing structures, or when unable to do so, accommodating and developing new schemes.
Instructional Theory: Discovery learning; sense-making opportunities are provided for learners to experience and construct new understanding; teachers take more interactive, less directive roles in the instructional process.

Ontology/Epistemology: Relativism
Unit of Analysis: Relation and processes between the individual and society
Dualism Perspective: Individual / Environment
Learning Theory: Learning is awakened in the learner and internalized by interactions between the learner and people in his/her environment; Exemplified by the work of Vygotsky, learning occurs in the zone of proximal development, the space between the level of development of the learner and what he/she is capable of with assistance.
Instructional Theory: Instructional scaffolding, where instructional support allow the learner to develop competence, after which the supports are removed.

Ontology/Epistemology: Ecological realism
Unit of Analysis: The learner as part of the system of which problem-solving occurs
Dualism Perspective: Mutualism
Learning Theory: Learning is an evolving form of membership in which the learners reproduce and transform their community of practice; learning emerges as a result of the learner's problem-solving role within the instruction.
Instructional Theory: Anchored instruction, where learning is situated in activities that present learners with complex, realistic problems to be solved using information embedded in an anchoring story. The affordances of such anchors are used to support specific teaching and learning activities, setting up a rich macro-context in which conceptual tools can be used to solve the anchor problem.

Javier Dueñas - University of Florida, Prepared for EME 5054, taught by Dr. Kara Dawson, Fall, 2020

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Javier Duenas

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