Paradigm Shifts And Theory Construction

The web-based instruction, as a new teaching method integrated educational thoughts with information and communication technologies, has always been motivated by both technology expansion and theory evolution. In the last decade, research and practice of information technology have been developing fast while theoretical research on web-based instruction advancing pretty slowly. Hysteresis in theory has become a main limiting factor in the development of web-based instruction. It's of great importance to acknowledge its essence and features, at the same time construct a theoretical system to interpret, support and guide the web-based teaching practice.Taking web-based instruction in distance higher education as the object, this author, by the virtue of paradigm shift and theory construction, tries to explore a systematical theoretic analysis on the essence of web-based instruction and the corresponding theories. The thesis falls into two parts. The first part deals with the changes of basic teaching elements and their functions between school teaching and web-based instruction in the process of teaching. In the two said paradigm, medium changes in language, storage, and interaction etc.; alteration in teaching content appears mainly in perspective on knowledge and curriculum, choice and organization of teaching content; and as for teaching interaction, change happens in model of information interaction and social communication. To sum up, the difference in school teaching and online instruction is a change as a whole which can be taken as a paradigm shift.The latter part of the thesis gets along a theoretical analysis on the construction of web-based instruction theory and its content. Web-based instruction theory is not a solo teaching thought but a...