As one who is heavily involved with international education I find your [Hart's] reaction to be forthright and concerned. Perhaps Charles' target audience is not for the larger arena, and as such, is a fairly accurate depiction of trends as they now exist in many United States scenarios.
[quoting Hart, 4 Dec 1996] Let's situate me before we begin: I write as an Australian... I hope I have developed some degree of cultural sensitivity. So please note that I am not adopting an anti-American stance here, but am making a plea for a greater degree of pluralism in our debates.
Clearly, the need to expand our universe of applications to be more inclusive is on target, if Charles intends his work to encompass the broader spectrum of trends. He will have to reply to that one.
What therefore struck me about Charles Reigeluth's paper was its cultural bias and its focus on "American values" (a phrase which is not always a compliment in this part of the world.)
While his work will analyze such values, and admittedly they are not mutually shared across the world, they do, however, reflect reality as he (and others) view it. I guess we cannot do much to change what is, so much as to point out the nature of the changes occurring (as McLuhan certainly did!), so that both front-line teachers and academics can ponder them and, one hopes, arrive at some meaningful ways in which to deal with the trends he describes.
Q: What is the difference between ISD and what other countries call "curriculum development"?
Probably not much, if the same inherent principles are involved--a rose by another name, perhaps? As you know, the "ISD" movement was spawned during World War II when the United States found itself needing a more efficient approach for the delivery of training to the troops. This "systems" approach was designed to do one basic thing--to teach military personnel how to kill (win battles?) without being killed first.
As such, this system proved quite adroit in teaching many things, among them requisite psycho-motor tasks required in the line of duty, to which were also added affective domain concerns such as patriotism, safety, hygiene, loyalty to nation, etc.
Out of all this emerged a new model of ISD which, while heavily oriented towards the vocations, persists today. So yes, you are correct in saying it is a uniquely American notion, but over the years it has been taken abroad by countless academics and teachers whom, having received their degrees in the States, now employ ISD in their own settings. Australia is but one such example. The emergent paradigms now reflect, I think, a continual refinement of this model, albeit, contextualized within a rapidly-changing educational environment.
The way I see it, academic instructional designers sit in university departments designing theoretical constructs which they send to one another between the covers of increasingly highly priced journals. I would argue that it is only pre-service teachers who are even aware of these constructs, having been forced to write essays on them as part of their training.
Don't forget all those studying the concepts in graduate programs, most of whom are practitioners in the field. I agree with you about the price of journals, however. :-)
What is the difference between an "instructional systems designer" and a text book author? (Under the text book rubric we can include educational films and WWW resources) And how does s/he assist the teacher in the classroom?
If the author approaches his/her writing task in much the same way an instruction designer does, I think we might just possibly evolve with some texts which are, in fact, a far better read than some we are subjected to at present. It becomes a competitive buyer's market now, and those which are both teacher and student "friendly" will be the ones which sell. One can still be erudite while providing a learning experience for the reader which is involving and a pleasure to read.
And yes, I would like to see Charles include contributions from abroad. I could names scores of international writers whose ideas would be widely accepted and add something more balanced to the work.