4.2 Consilience of knowledge

The term of “consilience” is drawn from Wilson’s (1998) book Consilience: the unity of knowledge. In the context of this project, consilience represents the synthesis of learning theories. This tool can assist users in analyzing a learning situation through systematically examining some highly relevant learning theories. Driscoll (2005) adopted Reigeluth’s definition of instructional theory: “identifying methods that will best provide the conditions under which learning goals will most likely be attained”(p.352). By contrast, a learning theory explains the relationship between specific learning conditions and desired learning goals.

In order to inform practice, teachers or instructional designers may either adopt design principles from instructional theories or draw implications from learning theories. Driscoll deplored the fact that few comprehensive instructional theories exist, and that practitioners have to rely more on drawing implications from learning theories than following a good ID theory.

If there were an ideal instructional system theory that is comprehensive enough, teachers and designers’ work would become less difficult and complex, and the quality of education would be improved. Unfortunately, there is not yet an ideal instructional theory. Gagne’s instructional theory is a fairly comprehensive one (Driscoll, 2005), but his theory fails to consider some perspectives, such as that of social constructivism. Therefore, we have to rely more on drawing implications from various learning theories.

Each learning theory illuminates some aspects of learning while obscuring others. So, fully understanding of learning requires a synthesis of learning theories. This is a difficult, yet very important task. I design the consilience tool for the above reason. I am expecting that my instructional design practice can be informed by a complete model in a more systematic way.