[quoting Spector, 14 Nov 95.a] In any case, I very much agree with Rod's comments that there is something of value in both the C&I camps which should be used when appropriate. I do not regard these as fundamentally different camps which define all design activities once one has chosen sides--which is what someone seemed to be suggesting in this discussion.
I think that "someone" was me! Nope, I think you might have got me wrong here. I was suggesting a framework for employing a rich and multivarious number of instructional strategies in any particular approach to teaching and learning, but arguing that it is simply wrong to see either C or I as recipes (camps?) from which one can take any number of ingredients at will, to make a new dish. The C and I "recipes" come as integral and coherent meta-theories of learning (or epistemologies); and they must stand alone as such.
Once having accepted this, it is then perfectly reasonable to employ any number of instructional strategies, based on learning theories, to meet the particular needs of the instruction, without compromising the integrity of either C or I approaches. For example, using drill strategies can, at times and for certain learners (e.g., to help students automate low-level cognitive responses; or help students invoke, for example, a problem-solving heuristic), occupy a respectable place in a constructivist learning environment.
C, in particular, is a complex construct--and its all too easy to misrepresent and oversimplify.