If you will follow this link, I will attempt to talk through the piece to give an example.  As the music starts, you will notice a variety of instruments  all playing at once.  Perhaps your ear is drawn towards the driving bass from the harpsichord and double bass, or maybe the peal of the trumpet strikes you.  Things get really interesting, however at the :20 mark.  Here you will hear the violin jump out front and forcefully state a melody.  Five seconds later the clarinet responds with her own melody, followed a few seconds later by the trumpet stating his melody.  These three ideas are passed back and forth between them, none gaining dominance, until at 1:10, the trumpet signals defeat and repeats the violin's original melody.  The violin has won the contest, this time.  To me, that conflict is very similar to the three major learning theories; behaviorism, constructivism, and cognitivism.  In my project, cognitivism won out, but given a slightly different scenario, I could have just as easily been whistling to the tune of behaviorism. 

          In that project, I chose to use a more cognitivist approach.  In cognitivism, knowledge is seen as a schema, and in order to learn the student must expand, enhance, or otherwise re-order their mental schema.  Additionally, cognitivists believe that learning requires an active effort on the part of the student.  This project was a good fit for a cognitivist approach because the students would be active participants in the learning process.  They would be required to take a set of rules and principles, in this case chess rules and strategies, and then apply them.  They would apply them through playing the game iteself.  With each game played or new tactic learned, they would have to modify their schema to account for the new information.

          What is most interesting about that project is that the purpose of it was not to teach chess, but rather use chess to teach critical thinking skills.  The game of chess asks much of a player, at any level.  They must develop short and long term strategies, they must sense what their opponent is attempting to do and block it or turn it to their own advantage.  Each mistake can lead to a change in critical thinking schema.  For example, in the game of chess the Queen is the most powerful piece and can move diagonally,  vertically, or horizontally.  Once I was playing a game and my opponent moved into a position where I had thought he was attacking diagonally.  It turns out he was instead attacking vertically.  This lead me to change my schema about how he played.  More importantly, however, it taught me to pay attention to all possibilities and to look at the situation from as many perspectives as I can.  These are valuable lessons, not just in chess, but life in general.

          In other instances I have used a very behaviorist framework, making use of Direct Instruction to meet educational goals.  For example, when I was in the Army I give lessons to fellow soldiers on common tasks, such as first aid or tactical maneuvers.  I did not know it at the time, but these lessons were formatted in a behaviorist style, where the learner would be given the standard, they would receive instruction and given the opportunity to practice to the standard, and then they would be evaluated.  I do not like to completely meld the theories because I feel that will lead to an incoherent and ill formed design, however I will divide an instruction into various pieces with one section being almost strictly behaviorist, while another may be very cognitive and so on.
          The aforementioned project for Dr. Knowlton's IT 500 class is a good example of what I mean by these divisions.  That project was developed to provide a rational for a unit on teaching chess.  Now, because a unit like this would naturally start with the basic rules of the game, behaviorism was my theory of choice.  Later in the unit when students are tasked to make sense of what they learned and apply as they see fit, I took a more cognitive-constructivist approach.  If my learner population were already competent players that knew the rules of the game, I would forego the first section entirely and the whole unit would be remodeled to be more cognitive in nature.

Explains clearly, substantively, and appropriately connections between theory and practice.

-- A New Perspective --

          In his paper on design research, Edelson (2002) says that after a design project, an instructional designer may develop some domain theories.  Edelson describes these theories as "a theory about the world" and that it may describe "learners and how they learn, teachers and how they teach, or learning environments and how they influence teaching and learning" (p. 113). I experienced an epiphany that has led me to develop a theory that has made my own design framework more coherent.

          While I was rewriting and rethinking a paper for Dr. Knowlton, I noticed at times that I used cognitivism and constructivism interchangeably to describe my project.  This, I thought, was very unlike me. I usually have a pretty solid understanding of the theories, so why was I doing this?  After a fair amount of thinking, I realized that I do not hear constructivism as a separate melody, but as a subtle variation to the cognitivist motif. 

          Jonassen (1991, p.10) says that constructivists believe that "learners construct their own reality or at least interpret it based upon their perceptions of experiences, so an individual's knowledge is a function of one's prior experiences, mental structures, and beliefs that are used to interpret objects and events." Constructivists also believe that learning should be based in the real world and knowledge acquired through authentic tasks.  Merril (1991) says that constructivists believe that learners should develop a personal and unique understanding of the world.  The problem for designers, as Jonassen (1994 [on line]) says, is that "if each individual is responsible for knowledge construction, how can we as designers determine and insure a common set of outcomes for leaning...?"  There is an inherent contradiction. One cannot devise common outcomes for unique understanding, they are mutually exclusive.

          It is in the examination of these learning outcomes that the shortcomings of a constructivist instruction become even more apparent.  What would constructivist objectives look like? I found these sample constructivist objectives from the Michigan State University, Virtual University Design and Technology site (2011):

• consider your personal history of learning experiences
• explore and react to new theories and examples of teaching and learning
• reconsider your original beliefs
• form teams, plan, and develop a real world learning object for a client where the learning object is consistent with your new revised perspective on how technology can enhance learning
• justify your design choices based on the principles you have learned

          Compared to Mager style objectives, those are vague almost to the point of being meaningless.  Notice also some of the verb choices: "justify," "develop,' "react."  These verbs are commonly thought of in association with Bloom's Taxonomy (1956), a very cognitivist framework.  It is my newfound belief that constructivism cannot stand alone as behaviorism or cognitivism can.  In order for constructivism to have any viability as an instructional design philosophy, it must be tempered with cognitivism.  Recall the counterpoint framework as layed out by kennan.  Can constructivism stand on its own?  I feel that in order for constructivism to have any real educational value, it simply must borrow from either behaviorism or cognitivism.  Are there enough differences in constructivism so that it can separate itself from the other "melodies" (behaviorism and cognitivism)?  Considering that at a recent symposium, two students that were on the verge of graduating thought they had built a constructivist unit when in fact they had used behaviorisism makes me wonder.  Due to these limitations, I do not feel constructivism warrants being a third learning theory, and these same limitations make it even more unsuited to be an operative design framework.   

         This change in my thinking forces me to re-visit my metaphor of design as represented by Bach's concerto.  While I had once heard three distinct melodies, I now hear only two: behaviorism and cognitivism. Would this mean that I am a new convert to objectivism?  I am not sure.  I still believe that learner can and should construct their own meaning of the material, but I do not see a way to design for that without compromising the subjectivity.  In other words, "constructivism is a 'learning theory', more than a 'teaching approach'" (Wilkinson, 1995 [on line]).  To me this means that it does not have a substantial practical role for me as an instructional designer. 

            Recently, in my CMIS 540 class, we discussed strong and weak situations.  A strong situation is one in which any person that finds themselves in that predicament will carry out the same procedures, regardless of their own personality.  An example of this may be a fire drill.  No matter who it involves, the vast majority of people in a fire drill will react in a very similar fashion.  A weak situation is just the opposite; the actions greatly depend on the individual person.  An example of this may be a kindergarten class going to the playground.  Some children will choose to play on the swings while others may play on the slide.  Still others may choose to just spin in a circle and yell.  The weaker a situation, the more the person involved affects the outcome.