Interesting as Ian Hart's [6 Dec 96] comments are, my own come from a slightly different angle. I thought the comment in Charles Reigeluth's paper that rang truest to me was about how Behaviorists, Cognitivists, and neo-constructivists all say different things but practice much the same--what he calls basic methods. That suggests to me that different theories articulate and emphasize different crucial aspects from a practice that works, none of them predict more than part of that practice. This is consistent with what a colleague once told me (I'm afraid I don't know the literature well enough to support this myself), that in all studies that had measured the effects of different teachers as well as of different instructional methods, the teacher effects were much bigger than the instructional ones. Again, this suggests to me that what the actual practice is matters a lot but we still do not understand what it is about good teachers' practice that does and doesn't matter.
From that follows the question: why do we need a new paradigm particularly? It will just be yet another different set of half truths.
The list given of industrial vs. information age features seems to me very much like that--yet more examples of touching on things that are involved but will go wrong if taken to either extreme. For example customization vs. standardization. Textbooks with contents lists and indexes let me customize very effectively by finding the parts I want quickly (relying on old evolved practices that work well); but I still want substantial standardization because part of the function of any textbook or curriculum is to tell me what the author thinks is the important set of things to know, whether I agree or not. Similarly the issue of student choice--learners are not in a position to make sensible choices because they do not know what there is to know nor what society will reward them for knowing (and penalize them for not knowing). Authors know that better. The other half of the coin is that learners know better than authors and teachers what prior questions and concerns the learners have. That is why total author control (which isn't possible with print at least) would be equally bad. All those contrasts seem to me foolish in that both extremes are bad, and good instruction will have some of both parts of each contrast.
Last week I spent many hours supplementing my education by using a textbook on current data networking (I felt I could no longer just go on using the stuff without understanding a bit more about it). The structure of the book let me have as much "choice," "initiative," "diversity," etc., etc., as I wanted, but it also let me see and learn from the author's view about the structure of the subject, what he regarded as essential, how he compartmentalized the topics, etc., etc. In other words, I could look up answers to my specific prior questions and interests, but also use his structure to discover what (in his view at least) everyone needs to know about--and got some interesting surprises there. I don't think the book was perfectly designed, and if I knew the author I would have quite a bit to say and ask at many levels, but my tentative criticisms are all about content and not about the instructional techniques. He used familiar ones and they worked just fine. Is a "new paradigm" really going to improve evolved practice?
The other thought that contrasting list suggested to me was that the "information age" side looked like a list of things we actually get with old technology but is still hard for new technology to allow. It is about how computers can catch up with virtues we take for granted in older contexts.