Name: John Esposito

Date: May 06, 2010

Article Summary:     

Although traditional instructional design and technology (IDT) has largely been based on objectivism, in the past 20 years, constructivism has emerged as a dominant framework for IDT. Both perspectives, however, present shortcomings. This article explores enactivism, an emerging new philosophical world view as an alternative paradigm. It also investigates the possibilities offered by this new paradigm to IDT. The philosophical world view known as enactivism is reviewed to illustrate the similarities and differences among the three philosophical paradigms, namely, objectivism, constructivism and enactivism.

Article Title:             

Instructional Design and Technology Grounded in Enactivism: A Paradigm Shift?

Citation:

Authors: Qing Li; Bruce Clark; Ian Winchester

Year: 2010

Published in: British Journal of Educational Technology May2010, Vol. 41 Issue 3, p403-419 17p 00071013

Web: http://library.calstate.edu/sandiego/metasearch/record?group=008445&resultSet=079076&startRecord=4

Problem:

1. There is no mechanism to avoid the construction of undesirable outcomes.

2. There is an undue influence in education and in what constitutes knowledge by the dominant

culture, that is, the white middle class.

3. Constructivism is concerned only with cognitive knowledge. It does not explain unformulated

or subconscious knowledge, it does not consider how things might be known intuitively or

instinctively, and it does not consider how emotions are constructed or their role in learning.

4. There do not seem to be explicit links made between constructivism and the learning theories

that brain science or neural biology offer.

5. While constructivism has numerous forms with respect to an individual and a social focus, and

a relativist or objectivist view of knowledge, no one form of constructivism seems to consider

these differences.

Context:                     

One main reason for such struggle is the lack of philosophical consistency in literature: constructivism includes many versions ranging from radical constructivism to social constructivism, often expressing conflicting ideas. Many people call themselves constructivists without much awareness of the fundamental differences among the varieties of constructivism. Nor are they always absolutely clear about the epistemological, ontological, metaphysical, and moral assumptions, concepts and values that undergird constructivist beliefs. They often take aspects from different versions of constructivism indiscriminately, with little understanding of fundamental distinctions between these strains, some of which may have contradictory philosophical assumptions.

Findings:

Some consider that enactivism is a new theory of learning while others believe that it is a theory of mind, which, from an enactivist perspective, is the same as epistemology a branch of philosophy. This article makes us assume that enactivism is not a learning theory but a world view from which various theories can be derived. Enactivism views that cognition is a complex co-evolving process of systems interacting and affecting each other and their environments.

Recommendations:

In conclusion, this research has demonstrated that:

1. Learning is not about gaining information, but an ongoing process of exploration about consciousness, self, context and interactions of complex systems in order to adapt to the evolving environments.

2. Both objectivism and constructivism offer us significant understanding of the learning process.

3. The purpose of learning is to mirror this abstract reality and its structure through thinking and cognition is governed by the real world and should reflect external reality.

4. Enactivism relies on biological interpretation of cognition and rejects the idea that knowledge consists of separate objects different from the world.

5. Enactivism and constructivism are fundamentally different, even though we may find seemingly parallel aspects. Both consider that environment plays a vital and integral role in cognition instead of simply supplemental to or a mere background to our consciousness.