When I first read the Bednar, et al., book Mike Vanhala [14 Apr 95] quotes I was struck by the problem that several contributors have outlined. It seems that while you cannot with intellectual self-respect defend opposing epistemologies at the same time, you can adopt an eclectic approach by seeming to mix them in learning and teaching strategies. Mike Pedler (1991) puts the kind of issue involved here very well in talking about his difficulty in explaining Action Learning satisfactorily to managers. The following three levels, he suggests, get mixed too easily in discussion:
1. the idea or paradigm level--a way of looking at the world,
2. the theory level--a means of explaining of predicting certain events in the world, and
3. the technique level--a method for doing something in the world.
Perhaps it is the case that the constructivist/objectivist discourse hovers mostly around Pedler's one and two, while the constructivist/behaviorist dilemma in instruction and learning is mostly three with a good bit of two? What we would like ideally is a clear linking of all three levels, but that is the hard bit. You usually have to resort to some "packaging" process, Pedler says, to do something in the world, and unfortunately "the packaging process tends to present the technique as if it were the idea." I enjoyed reading Marcy Driscoll's [13 Apr 95] and Linda Gilbert's [13 Apr 95] thoughts about seeing the idea through to the technique.
Pedler, M. (1991). Another look at set advising. In M. Pedler (Ed.), Action learning in practice. Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vermont: Gower.