Design approaches in training and education: Insights from practice

The issue of educational design was central in a study conducted at the University of Twente (The Netherlands). The goal was to describe the strategies that well-known designers in various education and training practices use. Twenty-three designers from different educational sectors (textbooks, curricula, educational media, etc.) were interviewed, and relevant project documents from their projects were reviewed. Interview findings were reviewed in light of four major movements in contemporary thinking and their underlying rationales: modernism, pragmatism, critical theory, and postmodernism. Main models of educational design can be related to these movements. In the philosophy of modernism, the planning-by-objectives model of instructional design uses logical reasoning and systematic approaches in an instrumental, or end-means, approach. The prototyping model, related to pragmatism, is useful when the goals of the design process are not clear. The deliberative model of educational design, related to critical theory, emphasizes the function of communication. The final model, the artistic model of educational design, is related to postmodernism and considers those who make decisions about instructional design as artists representing views of reality. Fragments from the interviews are used to illustrate these perspectives, although none of the designers represented the artistic rational.