Chapter 2: Instructional Design: Is it Time to Exchange Skinner's Teaching Machine for Dewey's Toolbox?

Previously published as paper presented at the Computer Support for Collaborative Learning Conference (1995, Oct. 17?20), Indiana University, Bloomington.

Prior to 1900, educational practice possessed little in terms of a theoretical framework, was certainly not considered scientific or subject to scientific study, but was a holistic enterprise in which teachers were expected to teach facts while also shaping character. Popular curricula included the McGuffy Readers, a collection of moral tales designed to build character in American students.

In the second half of the 19th century, European scholars theorized that it was possible to develop methods which would make the study of human behavior more scientific. The ideas of Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and Francis Galton in England heavily influenced the development of a new American School of Psychology and along with it the emerging field of educational psychology. Stanley Hall and William James, leading American psychologists at the time, had as one of their students, Edward Thorndike, who enthusiastically applied the new scientific psychology to the control of learning. In his still influential book, Principles of Learning(1921) Thorndike suggested that learning would occur if subject matter were carefully refined and sequenced and students appropriately reinforced. His popular prescription for intense practice as a condition of learning remains popular today.