This debate has thrown up the problem of different people working within different philosophical positions: qualitative/quantitative, positivist/realist and psychology/education are three that have been mentioned. David Frampton's [23 Oct 96] reply hints at one which hasn't been addressed: craft vs. art.
Most of the "research" on media effects has ignored the issue of creativity. It seems to have been an assumption of past media comparison researchers that one can one set up a hypothetical medium called, for example, "print" and include in it Joyce, McGonagall, and the Microsoft Word instruction manual; or under "film/video," Kurasawa's The Seven Samurai and America's Funniest, etc.?
I have written a few papers exploring this issue (Hart, 1982; 1992), but to my knowledge, no researcher has seriously attempted to show how a medium's quality and creativity might influence learning. Salomon has perhaps come closest to it in his 1979 study of Sesame Street. To tackle this issue seriously we would have to move outside what John Biggs calls "the four square symmetry of the psycho-lab" and delve into the murky depths of postmodern criticism and semiotics. We would have to wrestle with smoke and consider the psychological effects of music tracks.
But why not? Let's widen the net and bring in our colleagues in the Music, English, or Fine Arts departments. Perhaps this is a question for "aka The Moderator"--a future paper on learning and art? The art of learning? Creativity versus cliche in education? Any takers?
My modest references were:
Hart, I. (1982). Educational television: the gulf between researchers and producers. Journal of Educational Television, 8(2), 91-98.
Hart, I. (1992). Video, foreign languages teaching and the documentary tradition. System, 20(1), 1-13.