The following chart represents an attempt to symbolize my own conception of instructional systems as a field of study and practice. What follows is an attempt to explain this complex depiction.

Learning. On the left side, there is an image of a wedge, representing my general conception of educational theory. At the heart of my professional interests is the phenomenon of learning. Whether it is lifelong learning, continuous learning, organizational learning, learning by doing, learning through reflection, learning by modeling, learning to perform, or learning simply for the fun of it, learning is at the crossroads of my interests and endeavors.

Instructional theories. Instructional theories, which include instructional design theories and models, teaching models, and instructional development models (among other things) are, I believe, closest to the phenomenon of learning... closer than most other fields that study this phenonmenon (including cognitive psychology, educational psychology, educational theory and policy, curriculum and instruction, and others).

It is my (our) responsibility to take the outputs of those other fields that study learning from a greater distance and combine it with contextual realities, sprinkle influences from other non-learning fields (e.g., management, communications, systems design, information technology, and many others), and finally produce theories and models that will directly guide the practitioners of instructional systems (i.e., teachers, trainers, instructional designers, performance technologists, training managers, chief learning officers, and others).

Learning theories and theoretical roots. Reigeluth (1999) defines learning theories as those that describe beliefs about how people learn. I interpret this to mean a theory that describes what learning is and how it occurs. Learning theories are different from those that deal with how we should design instruction (ID theories and models) and those about how we should teach (teaching models). Some believe that there are only three learning theories (behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism). I have heard that some educational psychologists argue that constructivism does not even qualify as a theory. I personally prefer to think of these as perspectives (paradigms, perhaps).

There are many largely held perspectives, including behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, social constructivism, objectivism, post-positivism, humanism, pragmatism, and many others. Within each perspective, there are a variety of theories that describe what learning is and how it occurs (i.e., what I will call a learning theory). For example, within behaviorism, one can find scientific behaviorists, logical postivist behaviorists, and even cognitive behaviorists, each postulating their own concept of what learning is and how it takes place. Taken a whole, learning theories are the fodder with which instructional systems theorists toil the soil of instructional design. All ID theories and models are rooted in learning theory or a combination of learning theories which in turn are rooted in a particular theoretical perspective (or paradigm). It is for this reason that in the image above, learning theories are depcited as overlapping between educational psychology (the source of many ID theories) and instructional systems.

Philosophical foundations. While learning theories may act as a theoretical foundation for instructional design theorists, one can trace learning theories back to their theoretical roots and beyond to their philosophical roots. This exercise takes use from the most concrete and contextual ideas (i.e., ID theories) to the most basic and abstract constructs (e.g., do thoughts really exist?). It exposes us to the great thinkers past and present (Aristotle, Plato, Confucius, Dewey, Heidigger, Wolfe, etc.) and helps us understand from where our current conceptions of reality are derived and where we might take our conceptions tomorrow.