Complex Learning Environments: Connecting Learning Theory, Instructional Design, and Technology (part 2)

by James W. Pellegrino
University of Illinois at Chicago

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IMPLICATIONS FOR CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, AND ASSESSMENT

There are multiple benefits of focusing on issues of how people learn with regard to matters of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. At the level of curriculum, knowledge of how people learn will help teachers and the educational system move beyond either–or dichotomies regarding the curriculum that have plagued the field of education. One such issue is whether the curriculum should emphasize “the basics” or teach thinking and problem-solving skills. Both are necessary. Students’ abilities to acquire organized sets of facts and

Model-Centered Learning Environments: Theory, Instructional Design, and Effects (part 1)

by Norbert M. Seel
Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, Germany

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Schooling, especially in mathematics and science, has been criticized for decades. Actually, despite the increase of budgets, the implementation of new programs, the lengthening of school days and years, and the addition of new subjects and the deletion of others, the results of these efforts have been disappointing. Thus, with regard to mathematics education, Peterson (1988) criticized the elementary school mathematics curriculum “as based on the assumption that computational skills must be learned before children are taught to solve even simple word problems” (p. 7). The curriculum also reflects this sequence at the secondary level: Students generally take arithmetic

Complex Learning Environments: Connecting Learning Theory, Instructional Design, and Technology (part 1)

James W. Pellegrino
University of Illinois at Chicago

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The past three decades have produced an extraordinary outpouring of scientific work on the processes of thinking and learning and on the development of competence. Much of this work has important implications for the design of learning environments and for the nature of instructional practices that maximize individual and group learning. Simultaneously, information technologies have advanced rapidly.