The Rationality Of Instructional Design And Its Limitations

Teaching is a purposeful, planned, organized activities. In order to guaranteemeeting the teaching goals and progressing according with the teaching activities, it isa necessity to have a teaching plan. Instructional Design is the work or activity formaking a teaching plan. To be exact, instructional design is the activity and processwhen the instructors aims at completing certain instructional tasks and optimizingthe teaching effectiveness, target teaching system and its activities, use the systematicapproach to analyze instructional problems and the constraints, select and determinethe teaching execution strategies. Through instructional design, instructors developteaching activities to expand, according to the executive scheme, so that teaching canbe a planned, step by step and efficiently expand until it reaches the required teachingobjectives.The importance of instructional design for teaching is self-evident. Anyteachers must have the correct instructional design view, master comprehensiveinstructional design methodologies, with a relatively strong instructional design ability.This is an important premise for teachers to be competent for their jobs, also the basicquality requirements of teachers.Instructional design is one of human design activities. Design is the activity andprocess when in order to achieve a specific purpose, prior to conducting a morecomplex work, people conduct the systematic analysis, planning, making, selectingand forming the working scheme. Purpose, planning, anticipatory, creativity andvisibility are the common features in design. Meanwhile, the design activity is also arational activity. Rationality is unique to humans, manifested as a cognitive reasoningability in the process of understanding and grasping of the general laws and nature inthe objective world. Rationality has played an important role in the development of human history, isthe main driving forceof human progress.Prior to conduct anypurposeful activities, or to produce any product to meet the specific needs, peopleneed comprehensive consideration of the purpose, both subjective and objectiveconditions, according to the known objective laws, conduct careful design, select theappropriate activity or execution scheme. The rationality of instructional design is therationality within instructional design, it refers to theapplication and manifestation ofthe cognitive ability and logical reasoning during theinstructional designprocess, withthe aim of achieving the goal of instructional design, completing instructional designtask. As teachers face more complex instructional tasks, need to conduct more carefulinstructional design, need to rely more on rational cognitive ability to analyze andstudy the teaching system and its process, with rational reasoning and judgment, toselect and determine the final teaching scheme. Therefore, the rational ofinstructional design plays an important role when instructors conduct instructionaldesign activities, without the rationality of instructional design, instructional designwould be difficult to proceed smoothly, it is difficult to eventually develop teachingscheme, teaching will be difficult to conduct smoothly.However, when practice the primary and secondary teaching in reality, teachersoften show two contradictive aspects of the instructional design rationality, one aspectis a lack of rationality, not able to conduct scientific, reasonable instructional design;the other aspect is the impropriate rationality orrational transgression, can noteffectively play the roleof instructional designor to exaggerate the role of instructionaldesign.This paradox is certainly result in the lack of teachers themselves, with limitedrational ability, but also closely related with teachers holding an incorrect view ofinstructional design. Primary and secondary school teachers often hold a rational viewof the absolute instructional design that by virtue of reason, one can make the perfectinstructional design, for all the aspects of teaching, for each procedure and behavior inthe teaching process, optimize the design and arrangement, work out the perfectdetailed teaching scheme, and only by implementing this scheme strictly, one canensure that teaching effectiveness can be highly optimized. This led to a more detailedscheme of instruction, more fancy courseware, more skilled use of technology. However, it is undeniable that this improving instructional design did not significantlyimprove the universal teaching quality, but led to increasingly rigid instructionaldesign and technicalization, increasingly utilitarian and dogmatic of teachingactivities. Instructional design has completely become a tool and technical work. Inthis case, we need to study the rationalityand limitation in instructional design, toreflect and reconstruct the current teachers’ instructional design view.According to the systems theory, human society is constituted by many large andsmall systems, some are simple, others are complex. A complex system is differentfrom a simple system in many features, such as nonlinear, disorder, uncertainty,evolutionary, emergence, and so on, the presence of these featuresmaking theunderstanding, prediction and controlof the complex systemsan extremely difficult orevenimpossible task.The pastsimple paradigm of human can only solve therecognition, prediction and control problems of simple systems. For complex systems,Famous contemporary French philosopher, thinker Edgar Morin pointed out that thetraditional simple paradigm no longer applies, and should be replaced by complexparadigm. Teaching system is a complex system composed of many elements,withcomplex characteristicsshared with all the other complex systems. Teachers face sucha complex system, must know it, analyze it and design it properly with complexparadigm.In addition, human is never a purely rational animal, but a complex animal withrationality and irrationality coexistence and influence mutually, together play a role.In human history, countless designed masterpieces have never been completed solelyby rationality. Reason has its scope, irrationality has its scope, the two can not bemutually replaced, can only complement each other and influence each other. FamousAmerican economist, management scientists, psychologist, artificial intelligenceexpert and founder of design school Professor Herbert Alexander Simon pointed outthat due to the limitation of human knowledge and experience, our understanding andthe ability of analysis and computing is also limited, therefore, the reasonality islimited. Because of the limited nature of rationality, decision-makers can only makerelatively satisfied decision, but can not make optimal decisions. Similarly, because of teachers’ knowledge and experience is limited, their cognitive ability and analyticalskills are limited, the necessary information can be obtained during the instructionaldesign is limited, therefore, the rationality of instructional design is boundedrationality instead of absolute rationality, instructional design is also limited. Thelimitation of instructional design depends on the rational ability of teachers and thecomplexity of a teaching system, the teaching system complexity and rationality ofteacher himself together determine the limited nature of instructional designanddetermine the limits of instructional design. During instructional design, teachersshould not pursuit the out of reach optimal solution, but should seek to develop arelatively satisfied teaching scheme.After recognizing the limited nature and limits of rationality and instructionaldesign, teachers should establish an instructional design view based on the boundedrationality. The bounded rational instructional designview is short for the instructionaldesign view based on the bounded rationality, it refers to when teachers areconducting the instructional design, not only affirm the positive role of instructionaldesign, but also admit the limited nature of instructional design’s function, besides letthe rationality function reasonably and fully, make full use of irrational factors, tohave rationality and irrationality function together, to complete the task ofinstructional design, to develop relatively satisfied teaching scheme suitable forcomplex teaching system and in the implementation of educational scheme, tomaintain sufficient flexibility and sensitivity, adjust scheme according to the changeof situation. Teachers should conduct instructional design based on this boundedrationality view, use complex mode to analyze and think about teaching system, andto complete the instructional design work. This bounded rationality instructionaldesign view, whether for improving the quality of teaching, or for the promotion ofteachers’ individual professional developmentis of great significance. To developandestablish this bounded rationality instructional designview, on the one hand, thecurrent teacher educationand teacher training, inspection and evaluationsystem for thedaily school lesson plansand teaching the awardssystem will need to makesomechange; the other hand,as a teaching designer, teacher himself has tomake effortsin many ways.This paper adopts the research method of using a combination of qualitative andquantitative theory, a combination of theory and practice, conducts a in-depthcomprehensive analysis of the rationality of instructional design and its limits, to helpteachers establish a correct concept of rational instructional design, to improve thequality of instructional design work, and thus to improve the quality of classroomteaching.Introductory part of the paperdes cribes the paper’s background,significance, andsummarizes the relevant study of instructional design and its rational, and thenintroduces the research purpose, content, ideas and methods of this paper.The first chapter is "to define the concept and theoretical basis", in the conceptdefinition section, first sort out many views of design and instructional design, basedon this, the author presents her own definition; then sort out the concept of rationality,after the analysis of these concepts, the author presents her own definition ofrationality, and finally bring up the definition of the basic concept of rationalinstructional design. In the basic theory session, the author describes two theoreticalbasis, one is the complexity theory, complexity theory is the basic theory to studycomplex problems, the author first introduces the history and features of complexitytheory, then introduces its main ideas, which include the Moran complex paradigmand its principles, and the analysis of the various complex manifestations whencomplexity theory impacts the complex systems, finally, the author points out thetheory’s inspiration for this study; Second theory is Simon’s bounded rationality, theauthor first introduces the generation process and the main content of the boundedrationality, and finally pointed out the theory’s revelation significance for the study.Second chapter is "a historical review of instructional design", there are two parts:in the first part the author first reviews the historical development human designactivities, including the origin of human design activities and development stages, andthen reflects on human design activities and their development. The second part firstlysorts out the historical development of instructional design, then summarizes andreflects on the characteristics of the historical development of instructional design. The third chapter is the "the investigation of current situation in primary andsecondary instructional design", the paper investigates the current situation in primaryand secondary instructional design in our country from two perspectives, one is toinvestigate the primary and secondary teachers, including using questionnaires,interviews and checking lesson plans, to understand their understanding ofinstructional design and the behavioral features to conduct instructional design; thesecond is to analyze the teachers’ classroom behavior via watching the teachingvideos in primary and secondary schools, in order to indirectly understand theteachers’ conduct of instructional design. In the final session, the paper summarizesthecurrent situation in primary and secondary instructional design, and analyzesteachers’ instructional design view.In Chapter IV,"the complexity of the teaching system and the limits ofinstructional design", based on the reflective criticism of simplicity and absoluterationality, first analyzes education systems and the complex performance of theteaching system, second is to bring up the limited nature of instructional design,analyze the significance of the limited nature of instructional design, then analyze thelimited manifestation of instructional design, finally discuss the limits of instructionaldesign andits problem.Fifth chapteris "bounded rationality based instructional design concept and itsimplementation path," first discusses themeaning, content and significance ofbounded rational instructional design, and how to establish this kind of boundedrational instructional design, then pointed this out four principles when conductinginstructional design under the guidance of the bounded rational instructional,including the principle of targeting relative satisfaction as the goal, science-basedprinciples rather than empirical principles, the principles of collaborativerationalityand irrationality, and the principles to unite the pre-designand generation.Conclusion of the paper summarizes the main research work in this paper, andthen point out the shortcomings of this study, and finally illustrate the prospects forfuture research.