Theories of Educational Technology

As Luppicini (2005) puts it, "...there is no single knowledge base to ground Educational Technology."  There is, however, a very large knowledge base of education and theories of learning.  Since both fields are concerned with how learners develop knowledge and skills, but educational technology simply focuses on a certain subset of methods and tools toward this goal, it makes perfect sense for educational technology to borrow from the more general knowledge base of education.

It makes sense, therefore, to follow a look at what educational technology is with an overview of different theories of education.  As part of the coursework toward my teaching license, I got a very brief overview that primarily consisted of superficial definitions of a few key theories.  This module started with a more academic look at the broad strokes of a few different theories of learning.  Prior to this module, I would have defined myself as a constructivist and, while this is still true, I now have a much clearer idea of what it means when I say this and what areas of my instruction I fall short of constructivism in.

The theory I choose to take a closer look at was discovery learning, in part because it fits very well with the importance I place on inquiry in my classroom.  Many science teachers take it as a given that the closer you can get your students to pure discovery, the better they are learning both the nature of science and the specific content, so I was surprised by the volume of criticism leveled at discovery learning.  The specifics of the criticisms, however, are familiar to any teacher who has ever tried to jump too quickly into pure inquiry.  Many researchers have found that students simply lack the required skills and cannot cope with the demanding cognitive load (Paas, Renkl, & Sweller, 2004).  I've certainly had students shut down or fail to learn the intended content when I made an inquiry lesson more open-ended than my students were really ready for.

This look at the theory behind discovery learning will not keep me from using the approach in my classroom.  Rather, it has helped me refine my ideas of how to scaffold students in the meta-cognitive processes required by discovery learning.  Hopefully, come fall, this will lead to more student learning when I give my students the opportunity for inquiry.

References

Luppicini, R.  (2005).  A systems definition of educational technology in society.  Educational Technology & Society, 8(3), 103-109.  Retrieved from http://www.ifets.info/journals/8_3/10.pdf.

Paas, F., Renkl, A., & Sweller, J. (2004). Cognitive load theory: Instructional implications of the interaction between information structures and cognitive architecture. Instructional science, 32(1), 1-8.  Retrieved from http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~bmann/0_ARTICLES/CogLoad_Paas04.pdf.