[quoting Reigeluth's paper] The Learning-Focused instructional theory must offer guidelines for the design of learning environments that provide appropriate combinations of challenge and guidance, empowerment and support, self-direction and structure. And the Learning-Focused theory must include guidelines for an area that has been largely overlooked in instructional design: deciding among such variable methods of instruction as problem-based learning, project-based learning, simulations, tutorials, and team-based learning.
Why do you think this new paradigm or theory will be able to better provide guidelines than the previous ones. Given related discussion about the influence of ISD in the US, which had as a basic premise a demonstrable change in the learner's behavior (which is measurable), how will this new theory be an improvement? Will it include measurable premises? Can these guidelines be validated to work, or will they remain unproved theorems? Many of our design decisions today are made on "gut feeling, experience, or preference" not on proven results, due to the lack of prescriptive guidance.
Learners are able to make decisions (with varying degrees of guidance) about both content (what to learn) and strategy (how to learn it) while the instruction is in progress.
There is also a research base that supports the premise that learners (especially immature ones--adults may be different) are typically not well prepared nor proficient at making these decisions--they simply do not know WHAT they do not know. (They cannot determine the "gaps" that need filled with knowledge until they have experienced either a lack or a failure that points it out to them.) Must they learn primarily from failure or mistakes? Let your child touch a hot stove to learn that it burns if you'd like, I'd prefer to design and present a safe learning experience for them instead and try to prevent this unnecessary pain.
A major shift in the paradigm of ISD that this scenario of the concept of user-designers represents is the notion that much of the analysis that is now done by a designer for a whole "batch" of learners well ahead of the actual instruction will soon be done during the instruction as the computer system continuously collects information from an individual learner and/or a small team of learners and uses that information to present an array of sound alternatives to the learner(s), both about what to learn next and how to learn it.
What "rules" will be used to prescribe these alternatives? How are they tested and proven? In my experience with intelligent tutors, the rules associated with the learner were typically relatively easy to define--those that apply to the "coach or tutor" are far, far more difficult.
This empowerment is particularly critical in the case of teachers. Teachers are a unique type of clientele for instructional designers. They share with us a (somewhat) common knowledge base in educational theory, as well as powerful perspectives in regards to what typifies appropriate instruction.
In my experience in the IT MEd/MS program at Utah State, where the majority of the students were teachers desiring a lane change or a special certification, I would disagree. Most had a very weak theoretical background at the bachelor's level. The master's program required only one "ISD" course and another in "Models of Instruction" though others were available. Show me teachers that apply "ISD" basics such as clearly stated (and measurable) objectives, criterion-referenced instruction (i.e., mastery teaching) on a consistent basis. Even if they studied it, it didn't "stick," as evidenced by the unpopularity of direct instruction methods though they have consistently been proven to work for specific content with specific audiences.
Teachers also have been empowered, both through formal preparation and classroom practice, to feel a great deal of ownership regarding the instruction they create and deliver.
The "down-side" of this empowerment is that the teachers do not generally want to be held accountable for the results and are very resistant to standardized testing, especially as a basis of merit pay (what industry calls "pay for performance"). The defense of "we'd be forced to teach the test" falls on deaf ears to an "ISDer" who would reply "please do, it's been validated and proven reliable." I simply do not see the congruency that you speak of in public education at the K-12 level. Perhaps in academia, but I've personally experienced it rarely there.
Rather than using pre-constructed instructional products, teachers use and create a wide variety of materials that support their own instructional activities. Other than perhaps novice teachers, most teachers tend to take pre-constructed instructional products, deconstruct them, and then use the resulting resources in unique ways during instruction. This raises the question, why do we continue to make complete instructional products for a clientele that doesn't want them nor will use them the way we, as instructional designers, intend for them to be used?
It also raises the question of whether the results of this "innovative use" were actually an improvement or not. Did more learning take place than would have otherwise? Where's the proof? Where's the demonstrable results? How was the instruction improved?
What do you think about the notion of user-designers, and the implications of it for what instructional theory needs to be like?
The "old term" of learner control has been researched, with inconclusive results--or at least not prescriptive enough to define the rules necessary for your proposed system of dynamically prescribing or modifying instructional events. I'm a doubting Thomas, literally and figuratively, but then I make my living as an instructional designer performing ISD.