Two Pathways to Instructional Delivery: Distinguishing between the Discipline-Based and the Development-Based Paradigms

Abstract

Many faculty members, particularly in skills courses such as management communication or statistics, base their instructional delivery on a discipline-based paradigm. This paradigm assumes that instructors should focus exclusively on the content of their academic discipline, stressing the value therein. The purpose of this article is to define an alternative—the development-based paradigm. This paradigm would have instructors focus on the organization of information that is common to all disciplines as well as on the psychology of the learning process. It is suggested that instructors would benefit from basing their instructional delivery on explicit paradigm choices rather than on tacit paradigmatic assumptions.