You will likely find the the paper by Greeno that
precedes the Karpov and Haywood paper (Am. Psychologist)
to your liking. It seeks the sort of synthesis
you propose under the banner of situativity theory.
With all due respect to Bob Gagne, I believe that
the approach to education that he has provided is
simply incommensurate with.......well I'll only
claim this for my own view of cognition as semiosis.
Others can speak for themselves. Identifying
something like "intelligence" or "democracy" as
a defined concept and then arranging the internal
and external conditions of learning to teach the concept
(e.g. prior discriminations, positive and negative
examples, etc.) seem to me to embody a commodity/conduit
view of knowledge where meanings are transferred from
instruction to learner. Nothing I have learned about
cognition in the last few years squares with that
view. This is not to say that I have no use for
systematicaly designed instruction. Holland and Skinner's
_Analysis of Behavior_ (a programmed text book) is still
one of the best introductions to operant conditioning
that I know. Some of the most meaningful educational experiences
in my life have been lectures. So we should not conflate
method with learning as several folks have mentioned.
Nor do I have particular aversion to behaviorism. It is
a powerful tool in contexts where self-agency is assumed
to be absent (my cat?) or can be minimized.
I don't honestly see where a prescriptive approach can be
seen as cultural, historical, or activity based. In what sense
can a defined concept be seen as an artifact, a tool or sign
for constructing understanding? I'm probably being unfair
here, but it seems to me that a prescriptive approach sees
learning as the end of a process (acquisition of a concept)
whereas I see it as the beginning or continuation of one.
I've probably carried this well beyond the interests of those
on the list, so I'll stop. I'd be pleased, Pedro, to
continue this in a back channel.
djc
Don Cunningham
School of Education
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
Phone: 812-856-8540
Email: cunningh who-is-at indiana.edu
Homepage: http://php.indiana.edu/~cunningh