Principles of Learning

"The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) formed a commissio in 1964 (Snelbecker, 1974) 'to delineated scientifically based theories from the more intuitively based and somewhat speculative 'theorizing' which had been so characteristic of educaiotn previously [p. 141].' This commission did much to focus attention on the need for 'scientifically based' instructional theories, and it provided guidelines as to the characteristics of such theories in the form of its Criteria for Evaluating Theories of Instruction (Gordon, 1968)." (Reigeluth, 1983, p. 27-28)

Criteria for evaluating theories of instruction (which mine is not, but the criteria are still relevant): from Gordon (1968, as cited in Reigeluth, 1983, p. 24-25) 1) Internal consistency - the theory should not contradict itself 2) Explicit boundaries and limitations 3) Not contradicted by empirical data (caution: apparent contradictions may be overturned with a reanalysis of the data) from Snelbecker (1974, as cited in Reigeluth, 1983, p. 24-25) 4) Parsimoney (i.e. simplicity) from Snow (1971, as cited in Reigeluth, 1983, p. 24-25) 5) Usefulness "The primary criterion for the evaluation of theory is usefulness, not truthfulness [p. 103]." and Hebb (1969, as cited in Reigeluth, 1983, p. 24-25): "A good theory is one that holds together long enough to get you to a better theory [p. 27]." Snow also says that a theroy should be useful for organizing existing data meaningfully and for producing useful hypotheses. (George Kelly also said something to that effect). from ...

"Several people who have written about the process of theory construction have advocated the use of paradigms or metatheories as useful for providing a framework within which to build one's theory (e.g., Snelbecker, 1974; Snow, 1971), and such frameworks can be very useful for both understanding and evaluating a theory or model as well." (Reigeluth, 1983, p. 14) Snelbecker - paradigm Snow - metatheory Reigeluth - "For our purposes, we use the term framework as synonymous with both paradigm and metatheory."