Complete thesis - Murdoch University

• the evaluation of learning and awarding of qualifications (eg◦ to pass or fail a student◦ to license to proceed or practise◦ to select for future employment)• feedback about the quality of the learning process (eg◦ to improve teaching◦ to evaluate a unit/programme’s strengths and weaknesses◦ to demonstrate the course’s creditworthiness to the ‘outside’ world),and, with a specification of content, form the basis of frameworks for instructional design.However, Wilson and Myers (1999) cautiously suggest that an integrated framework forinstructional design can be based on learning theories drawn from the behaviourist, cognitivistas well as situativist camps. Greeno (1998, p 14) is quoted as demonstrating that differentsituations call for different tools, models, methods:learning environments organized on behaviorist skill-acquisition principles encouragestudents to become adept at practices, involving receptive learning and drill,that result in efficient performance on tests, and learning environments organizedon cognitive knowledge-structure principles encourage students to become adeptat constructing understanding on the basis of general ideas and relations betweenconcepts.While maintaining the primacy of a situated framework Greeno (1998) continues by suggestingthat behaviourist skill-oriented and cognitive understanding-oriented learning are notdiametrical opposites, but rather have important strengths and values which need to beincluded (and evaluated) from a situative perspective.Wilson and Myers (1999, p 18) suggests that some way must be found to accommodatemultiple levels of scale and, to some extent, competing paradigms or theories.As a response to the tension generated by competing paradigms for instructional design,and the plurality of perspectives they engender, Hannafin et al (1997) have developed agrounded learning systems design model. Following this approach, the test for legitimacy isno longer using the right theory, but grounding practice in some theory validated by theresearch tradition, with consistency the key. As one example, the Cognitive Apprenticeshipmodel should be consistent with its grounded theory of situated cognition. However, Wilsonand Myers (1999) sees flaws in this approach – the same level of consistency based on atheory-centred approach runs the risk of putting theory in charge and hence reducing the156