Abstract
Instructional design (ID) emerged in the early 1900’s in the United States; the American discourse of ID has dominated since. In this paper, I examine ID discourse in several different geopolitical sites of theory and practice, including Canada, the United States, Australia, the UK, and Asia, and propose a more robust understanding of design theorizing and practice. The concept of community is often applied to social or professional groups whose members have beliefs, ideas, and purposes that bind them. Communities become sites of identity development, discursively constructed by its members in order to make meaning of their experiences. This discourse involves shared goals, relationships, and shared communicative practices about the praxis of that community, that are shaped and transformed by multiple forces including national identity, political context, age and gender, cultural beliefs and values, educational and work experiences, roles within an institutional or organizational setting. Each design sub-discipline has a different expectation regarding what terms to use, what subjects are important to discuss, how to behave, how ethical research is defined, and how papers should convey information. As a discourse community, instructional design (ID) is created by the collective practices of its members, providing a set of cognitive tools, such as theories, that individuals then adopt through their efforts to make sense of the practices of the community, and share through genres such as presentations at academic meetings, scholarly papers and manuscripts, curricula and content, and public participation such as editorials or community presentations.
Presenters
Katy CampbellProfessor and Dean Emeriti, Women's and Gender Studies, University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Discourse analysis, Community of practice, Identity, Sociocultural contexts, Instructional design
