Chapter 5: Constructivism in Instructional Design Theory

Epistemology and methodology serve the function of setting the foundations of a scientific discipline. In contrast to some philosophers of science (e.g., Salmon, 1992) who think that methodology includes heuristic considerations or other aspects of the context of discovery, I think that methodology concerns the logic of science (especially the logic of scientific method). Methodology concerns the context of justification. Epistemology concerns questions on how knowledge is acquired and what knowledge represents. In history, epistemology focused on human perceptual abilities. In our century (since the so-called “linguistic turn”), philosophers recognized language—or more precisely: human conceptual abilities—as an important factor for our epistemic access to reality. Thus, epistemological and methodological considerations always include conceptual considerations.