In the last weeks, I was reading one of the most important and classic articles of instructional design that has been written by Reigeluth, Bunderson, and Merrill at 1978. In that paper I could see very good points about this science and field of study and there was important conceptualization about this field. As a new field of study, Educational Technology and Instructional science had been encountered with a lot of questions and argumentations.

The major purpose of Instructional science is to contribute to improving the quality of instruction. One of the pioneer scientists that extracted principles from learning theory was B. F Skinner. Programmed Instruction that has been introduced by B. F Skinner was the first program that had been applied principles of instruction.

Reigeluth, Bunderson, and Merill (1978) say that learning theories are descriptive in nature and Instructional theories are prescriptive and this distinction is important feature of these theories. After some discussions about instructional development process and three phases of this process and also three approaches related to those process, they discriminate three professionals that is important for knowing by every person that working in this science and field of study.

Reigeluth, Bunderson, and Merill (1978) said, “There are three types of professionals related to a prescriptive science- scientists, who discover principles, technologists, who use those principles to develop procedures or machines, and technicians, who use those procedures or machines to produce products”

At the end, as was mentioned in the above paragraph and we can see, there are three types of professionals in the science of instruction and every one of us that has position in this science and field of study as theorist and practitioner must pay attention to these types of professionals. In fact, these types of professionals can be small conceptual model for all of us in this field for taking our roles.

For more information please check this article:

Reigeluth, C. M., Bunderson, C. V., & Merrill, M. D. (1978). What is the design science of instruction?. Journal of Instructional Development, 1(2), 11-16.