Crucial Issues in the Field of Educational, Instructional & School Psychology
by Gabi Salomon

Instructional psychology is one of the oldest fields of scientific psychology, influenced by scholars such as E. L. Thorndike, William James, and John Dewey. No wonder therefore that the origins of many of the issues instructional psychology is still concerned with today can be traced back to its traditional origins: learning, motivation, individual differences, social relations, abilities and their cultivation, emotions (e.g., anxiety), the psychology of school-based subject matter (e.g., mathematics and its difficulties), testing and measurement, and the like.

However, the field of instructional psychology also shares with other fields of psychology current challenges, unrest, and disputes. Among these one finds the battle between new vs. established epistemological paradigms, calls for greater ecological validity, criticism of what used to be the hallmark of good research -- the experiment, demands for greater applicability and relevance for practitioners, and a demand for a less analytic, laboratory-based, often seen as sterile and contrived science. Most of these challenges are not unique to instructional psychology, but -- being a field that needs to bridge the gap between theories of learning and instruction and educational practice -- these challenges appear to touch the very core of the field.

Integration vs. isolation of factors

Indeed, a common denominator of most of the crucial issues facing nowadays the field is the questioning of commonly held underlying assumptions about human learning and ability, and learning contexts, and thus ways to study and promote them. According to one such (usually implicit) assumption, complex phenomena - such as learning, concept formation, or problem solving, as well as the human psyche in general - ought to be broken down into discrete, isolated variables ("isolation-by-reduction"), to be studied additively and interactively. Each state or process of interest would thus have to be studied as an independent entity onto itself.

Dissatisfaction with this assumption and its research implications has led in recent years to a far greater integration of aspects of learning, ability, aptitudes, personality, emotion and motivation, coming to view them in more holistic, systemically integrated ways (see e.g., Pintrich, 1991). Quite possibly, computer simulations of human cognitive behavior, while successfully illuminating the highly detailed operations of specific ("cold") cognitions, also exposed the void caused by the disregard for "hotter" cognitions. After all, little intentio nal learning or deliberate application of previously acquired knowledge (transfer), can take place under conditions of no motivation, high anxiety, or effort avoidance. Will and skill are now studied together, as are intelligence and personality, motivation and ability (e.g., Saklofske & Zeidner, 1995). As Glaser and Bassok (1989) have observed, "It is good science to avoid confounded effects, but the eventual objective in these studies [on learning] is obvio usly not isolated phenomena... the process of transition or the various learning mechanisms may not operate in isolation" (p. 658).
This, though, raises serious methodological questions, to which I will return later on.

Contextualization and situated cognitions

A second (also implicit) assumption, now questioned, was that the educationally-relevant processes of interest are pretty universal and thus can be formulated and studied outside any particular cultural, social, or subject- matter context. But this, as the field has come to accept, is not an easily defensible assumption. Contexts do most often exert strong influences, particularly when educational processes and products are concerned. How much students learn, the amount of mental effort they invest in the process , the extent to which they come to self regulated learners, etc. greatly depend on their classroom's learning climate, the community's expectation, their teachers' perceptions, and other "contextual" factors.

Viewing learning "in context" may mean two somewhat different things. On the one hand it means that the social, interpersonal, and cultural surrounds within which, say, learning takes place affect both the learning processes and the learning outcomes. This much is not in dispute. Secondly, "in context"; has come to mean something more radical and controversial, namely that skills, strategies, and learning processes rather than being relatively neutral too ls available for varied general application, are tightly connected to their immediate contexts of practice. They are thus highly situated (e.g., Lave & Wegner, 1991).

The view of learning as contextually situated, has become a crucial issue in instructional psychological research and theorizing. On the one hand, it implies that skill and knowledge inseparable. Moreover, if they are subject-matter, interpersonal, practice, and cultural context specific, then the teaching of more generalizable knowledge and transferable skills has no place. Similarly, there is no room for the design and study of subject-matter neutral instructional processes and strategies.

On the other hand, though, there is ample experiential and research evidence to show that skills and knowledge can be generalized and can become transferred under particular conditions (e.g., Perkins & Salomon, 1989). It is also argued that while skills acquired in real-life situations may not generalize to school, the converse is not necessarily the case; indeed, instruction by abstraction can and does generalize to real-life situations (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996). The scholarly pendulum keeps swinging back and forth from the situated pole to the pole of the more general view of learning. It is likely that this collision of approaches will yield a new understanding of the relationships between the general aspects of strategy, ability, skill and knowledge and their more situation specific ones.

Constructivism

A third assumption that has come under attack concerned the nature of learning itself - as if it is a process that can not only be isolated from its volitional and emotional components but that it is a relatively passive process of exposure and acquisition. The cognitive revolution, plus a deeper understanding of Piaget's contribution, as well as research on everyday cognitions (e.g., Lave & Wegner, 1991), have led to a growing acceptance of what has come to be called a "constructivist" orientation.

Although the construct of constructivism is now a widely adopted perspective, its meanings and implications are indeed far from clear, thus yielding a variety of interpretations, applications and intriguing questions (e.g., Phillips, 1995). For example, if knowledge is a matter of (quite individual) mental construction, how can one judge the "correctness" of a student's newly constructed scientific knowledge (e.g., Bereiter, 1994)? Does learning as a constructive process imply the supremacy of semi-autonomous discovery, exploratory, problem-based learning with only nondirective guiding instruction? What role should more directive, "didactic" instruction play? What place is there left for the presentation and expectation for the acquisition of ready-made, well constructed disciplinary knowledge? What instructional design would increase the chances for "correct" mental construction of a process or principal?

One of the many interesting questions facing research in the field of instructional psychology concerns the incongruity between teachers' declared positivistic beliefs and their real beliefs and understandings of children's learning which reflect a "direct transmission" perspective (e.g., Strauss, 1993). Such traditional views affects teachers' ways of teaching, hence manifesting again the worrisome gap between instructional psychological research and the actual practice of instruction.

Socially distributed cognitions

A fourth widely held assumption (or rather - belief) that has come to be questioned concerns the "solo" nature of learning and thinking. The growing influence of Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory, the new acceptance of the social context of learning, the role played by intellectual partnerships with an intelligent technology, and the impressive evidence coming from research on collaborative learning, have all suggested that learning may be an intra-individual process no less than being an inter-personal one.

May be, as Pea (1993) argues, that intelligence (and by implication, much of human intelligent behavior) is something that emerges socially rather than being solely a matter of a possessed entity. Hence the construct of distributed cognitions has come to play an increasingly important role in the field. Yet, how exactly does it differ from, say, division of labor, partnership, or collaboration and what does it imply for the design of instruction aimed at the cultivation of ("solo"? distributed?) human ability? Is "distributed ability" something sufficiently viable that can be promoted and cultivated? The issue has become a crucial one as it touches the very core of instructional psychology with implications for the study of aptitudes, knowledge, and their cultivation.

Cultivating expertise

Crucial issues facing instructional psychology are not only the result of questioning old assumptions. Old issues often resurface with new faces particularly when it becomes evident that much attention to one issue has left out something else of importance. Such is the case with the study of how to turn novices into experts. Much attention has been devoted to the study of experts in a variety of fields (e.g., chess, physics, teaching) and the ways they differ from novices. But knowledge of what expertise consists of does not imply how one can instruct a person to become an expert (Glaser, 1990?). For, as the issues mentioned above suggest, it is neither a matter of didactic instruction (of ten leading to "inert knowledge"), nor one of sheer practice. This is now one of the major issues on the agenda of the field.

The design of novel learning environments

The questioning of long held assumptions coupled with a growing understanding that, indeed, the study of isolated, controlled variables constitutes a rather sterile and ecologically less than valid science of learning and instruction have all led to a new approach to instructional psychology, characterized by design experiments (e.g., A. Brown, 1992). Work typical of this approach combines theory-guided design of whole real-life learning environments, including curricular, social, technological, teacher training and physical setting elements. This is a truly systemic approach which, to an important extent, has been facilitated by the introduction of computers into instruction. Once seriously introduced, computers become subversive instruments, affording a whole new pedagogy which, in important ways, helps to realize the implications that emanate from the psychology of constructivism, situated-cognitions and social context of learning (Salomon, in press). Importantly, though, researchers in the field who used to be side-line observers of learning and experimentalists suddenly turn into designers and implementers of systemic changes, deeply involved in the real world of the school. Is the science of the detached observer changing into the science of the artificial whereby concerned scientists become involved in the very stuff they are to study? Clearly, a new epistemology seems to emerge.

Methodological issues

The new "integrational" view of human ability, learning and instruction, and of whole learning environments, while promising and badly needed, also extracts a certain price. There is a growing competition between exactitude and ecological validity, between focused identification of isolated factors to allow for specific accounting of change and a more realistic, holistic view of learning and instruction. While much research continues to be carried out in the older,"analytic" tradition, the new wave tends to sacrifice certitude and focused rigor for greater authenticity and ecological validity.

This shift, although certainly not exclusive or exhaustive, requires the development of new research methodologies as well as novel means of evaluation, testing and assessment. Thus one finds a growing interest in "authentic assessment" of achievements by means of non-testing methods (e.g portfolio assessment), a spreading employment of qualitative research methods to enrich (and sometimes enter an epistemological competition with) quantitative methods, and the adoption of tools for the description of whole learning environments-as-systems. Similarly, there is a growing concern with the description and analysis of interpersonal processes of learning as well as methods such as "think aloud" for the study of cognitive processes during learning and problem solving. Clearly, the field of instructional psychology is up to some exciting new methodological vistas.

REFERENCES

Anderson, J.R., Reder, L.M., & Simon, H.A. (1996). Situated learning and education. Educational Researcher, 25, (4) 5-11.

Bereiter, C. (1994). Constructivism, socioculturalism, and Popper's World 3, Educational Researcher, 23, (7) 21-24.

Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2, 141-178.

Glaser, R. (1990). The reemergence of learning theory within instructional research. American Psychologist, 45, 29-39.

Glaser, R. & Bassok M., (1989). Learning theory and the study of instruction. Annual Review of Psychology,40, 631-666.

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York. Cambridge University Press.

Pea, R.D. (1993). Practices of distributed intelligence and designs for education. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed Cognitions . (pp. 47-87). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Perkins, D.N., & Salomon, G. (1989). Are cognitive skills context-bound? Educational Researcher, 18, (1) 16-25.

Phillips, D.C. (1995). The good, the bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivism. Educational Researcher, 24, (7) 5-12.

Pintrich, P. (1994). Continuities and discontinuities: Future directions for research in educational psychology. Educational Psychologist, 29, 137-148.

Saklofske, D.H., & Zeidner, M. (1995) (Eds.). International Handbook of Personality and Intelligence. New York: Plenum.

Salomon, G. (in press). Unorthodox Thoughts on the Nature and Mission of Contemporary Educational Psychology. Review of Educational Psychology.

Strauss, S. (1993). Teachers' pedagogical content knowledge about children's minds and learning. Educational Psychologist, 28, 279-290.

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