Although traditional instructional design and technology (IDT) has largely been based on objectivism, in the past 20 years, constructivism has emerged as a dominant framework for IDT. Both perspectives, however, present shortcomings. This paper explores enactivism-an emerging new philosophical world view-as an alternative paradigm. It also investigates the possibilities offered by this new paradigm to IDT. The philosophical world view known as enactivism is reviewed to illustrate the similarities and differences among the three philosophical paradigms, namely, objectivism, constructivism and enactivism. Finally, details of enactivism and its implications for IDT are explored. IntroductionThis paper explores enactivism and the possibilities offered by this paradigm to instructional design and technology (IDT). Enactivism, rooted in the phenomenological work of Merleau-Ponty and Bateson's biological perspectives, is an emerging philosophical world view and has flourished particularly in the field of mathematics education. At a fundamental level, it rejects dualism and focuses on the importance of embodiment and action to cognition.

No abstract

This article reports the evolution of a method to computerize record linkage in the "Hamilton Project" under the direction of Michael B. Katz at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. By record linkage is meant the bringing together of information concerning a particular individual (or even a historical event) from independent sources. In this case there was an attempt to link the names on a census roll of 1851 with those on an assessment roll of 1852 in Hamilton, records which differed in time by only three months. The problem is more difficult than might appear to the uninitiated because an individual referred to in one document as J. H. P. G. Yelverton (turner) is the same as J. H. P. G. Silvester (sawyer) in another. The first attempt at linkage reported here was done by hand, took five months, and netted 1,863 matches out of a possible 2,550. In the second linkage experiment the same two sources were employed but the data were placed on Hollerith 80-column punch cards and preliminary sorting was done by a mechanical card sorter. This second project, conducted by the same research assistant, took three months, and resulted in 1,955 linked pairs. Part of the time saved might have been due to the greater expertise of the assistant and cannot all be credited to the use of the card sorting techniques.Using the 1,955 linked pairs as a model file of linked pairs, a computer simulation linkage was designed by trial and error. In the first attempt a quasi-alphabetic sequence known as the Soundex code, which has been used in the field of medical record linkage, was utilized. The Soundex system sets aside the least reliable portions of Anglo-Saxon surnames, thus Smith/Smyth/Smythe all are codified the same. The effect is to reduce all surnames to a code consisting of one alphabetic character (the initial letter) and three numeric characters. To compress them in this way vowels are not coded and neither are W nor H. The remaining letters are grouped into six categories with, for example, B, P, F, V, all grouped together. Unfortunately the data proved somewhat resistant to such coding although all but 11 percent of those already linked were linked by computer. The system did not account for the fact that McKay often became McCoy, or Hicken, Hicker, or Suten, Sutor. In a second effort a pre-treatment system was utilized, based in part upon the SINGS code, designed for Scottish surnames, and a visual analogue of the Soundex code devised by Ian Winchester and John Tiller which they called a Viewex code. With this