Personal teaching and learning philosophies and the design decisions of instructional designers.

As educators and instructional designers consider educational practices nationally and internationally, they find themselves questioning the traditional ways of teaching and learning which seems to be outdated in an era defined by the World Wide Web and globalisation. Instructional designers and educators worldwide recognise that there is a need for learning facilitation that builds upon the diverse needs and diverse experiences of learners and that is open to change. Instructional design can be regarded as one way of addressing the needs of learner groups with diverse needs as learners attach much value to the quality of their learning materials. In fact, many learners depend on the quality of their learning materials to complete their courses successfully and to enter the labour market as qualified people. Well-designed learning materials and environments, therefore, play an important role in contributing to improved student pass rates and, in the broader South African context, to the skills development and socio-economic development of our country. It is thus a huge challenge for instructional designers to ensure successful learning facilitation by means of the learning programmes and environments they design. The intellectual contribution of this dissertation lies within the area of instructional designers’ personal views on teaching and learning. More specifically, the focus of this research inquiry is on investigating the extent to which the personal teaching and learning philosophies of a group of instructional designers at a higher education institution influence their design decisions. A review of the literature reveals that instructional designers are dependent on learning theories that have been tested in order to make design decisions that would best suit the requirements of a particular teaching and learning situation. For this inquiry I contend that the personal teaching and learning philosophies of instructional designers are based on established theories of human learning, but that their personal teaching and learning philosophies change over time as they address the demands of changing socio-cultural contexts. Considering the focus of this study, it is thus important to establish what a grounded instructional design approach entails as well as what views socio-cultural theory and activity theory hold on humanlearning and how these relate to the personal teaching and learning philosophies of the research participants. A grounded approach uses theories of human learning as a foundation for making decisions on the design of learning experiences and environments that would result in effective learning. According to activity theory, if human behaviour is to be understood, a study of surrounding social practices should be part and parcel of the inquiry. In this regard the decision-making process of instructional designers can be seen as an activity system. Within this system the design activities of instructional designers are mediated by tools aiming at effective learning programmes and environments. Tools, activity theory states, are created and transformed during the development of the activity itself. As such the personal teaching and learning philosophies of the designers are viewed as design tools that are continuously shaped and modified during the design process. This inquiry is concerned with the emergence of the everyday knowledge and actions of a group of identified instructional designers. Therefore a qualitative, ethnomethodological strategy is followed allowing me to examine the nature of the personal teaching and learning philosophies of the designers and how these philosophies are shaped and used to make instructional design decisions in their place of work. Activity theory is used as both the theoretical framework and data analysis tool for this inquiry. The findings of the study make it clear that instructional designers regard personal teaching and learning philosophies as essential tools in their daily design activities. The findings also demonstrate that personal teaching and learning philosophies are individual user tools, and as such the unique qualities of the tools remain with the individual instructional designer.Dr. G. V. Lautenbac