The authors have developed a comprehensive history of instructional design and performance improvement. They methodically describe the theories that became the foundation of instructional design and then explain how instructional design led to other theories, including performance improvement. They also identify future research opportunities. The Instructional Design Knowledge Base: Theory, Research, and Practice (2011; 219 pages; ISBN13: 978-0-415-80200-0, hardcover, $163.00; ISBN13: 978-0-415-80201-7, paperback, $47.95; ISBN13: 978-0-203-84098-6, e-book, $35.99 Kindle edition) is published by Taylor & Francis.THIS BOOK DOCUMENTS the authors' work on the development of a knowledge base covering the full breadth of the instructional design (ID) discipline and serves "as a guide to understanding ID practice while guiding future ID research and theory development" (p. xviii). Richey and Klein have worked together previously. In 2007, they wrote Design and Development Research: Methods, Strategies, and Issues, for which they won the James W. Brown Publication Award from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. For this book, they joined with Tracey, who brings expertise in the application of ID and a desire to help designers make better design decisions. Together the authors have written an excellent resource for instructional designers that will produce immediate benefits and long-term improvements in the field of ID.This book looks at a potentially overwhelming subject, the development of a knowledge base for the entire instructional design discipline, and takes readers on a tour of the ID field. The authors provide an insightful look at the origins of the ID discipline. By explaining how ID was created, they provide a complete description of its elements.As a graduate student studying ID, I found this approach very interesting. Prior to reading this book, I had developed training programs; however, I now see how the elements of ID interact. I understand that many of the readers of this book are practitioners and may understand the intricacies of ID. However, the discussion of the parts of ID helped me to grasp the process of designing instruction. CHAPTER SUMMARIESThe book is carefully structured to allow the integration of the elements to characterize the entire discipline. Chapter 1 provides an overview of ID and identifies six domains that are the hallmarks of instructional design: learners and learning processes, learning and performance contexts, content structure and sequence, instructional and noninstructional strategies, media and delivery systems, and designers and design processes. From this foundation, the authors build their knowledge base.The building of this base begins with a discussion of theories from four distinct fields that have directed and shaped instructional design: general system theory, communication theory, learning theory, and early instructional theory. These fields are covered individually in the next four chapters. Each chapter is laid out similarly. First, ...

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Uncertainty is a defining quality of the design space and it stands to reason that designers' personal attitudes toward uncertainty may influence design processes and outcomes via cognitive, affective, and/or behavioral channels. Individual attitudes and behavior patterns related to uncertainty may constitute a critical element of designer identity, which represents the synthesis of knowledge, action, and being. This qualitative study examined how graduate students in an instructional design course reflected on their experiences and beliefs regarding uncertainty.Participants were more reflective when discussing a general experience with uncertainty than their current attitudes toward uncertainty in design. Findings support the use of narrated reflection in design education related to uncertainty and identity. Implications for design education interventions and design are discussed.Keywords: professional identity; design education; design processes; reflective practice; design research Highlights:1. This study positions uncertainty orientation as an element of designer identity.2. The study examines reflection for identity development in relation to uncertainty.3. Participants achieved higher levels of reflection when discussing a general experience.4. Participants consistently failed to attend to emotional aspects of uncertainty.5. Some participants altered their uncertainty orientation when reconsidering the topic later. UNCERTAINTY AND IDENTITY 3Professional identity has been conceptualized as the synthesis of knowledge, action, and self, requiring not only the acquisition of expertise and skills but also professional ways of being (Dall'Alba, 2009; Tovey, Bull, & Osmund, 2010). From this perspective, students in professional education programs need to establish a sense of who they are becoming as a professional -and imagine who they might be -as the context for the development of the knowledge and behaviors that are manifested via the professional self (Dall'Alba, 2009). For design students, this means that foundational learning (i.e., what design is and what designers do, both in general and discipline-specific) should not be seen as an end in itself but should instead be used to facilitate the establishment of a preliminary and personal sense of what it means to be a designer. For design educators, this raises provocative questions: What designerly ways of being might be most useful for the initial cultivation of designer selves? And what instructional strategies and experiences might be effective in giving students the space and resources to explore these ways of being in service of identity development?As part of a long-term, design-based research project on design education, reflection, and professional identity, this study seeks to address these questions and contribute to emerging discourse on identity development in design by examining how graduate students in instructional design explored experiences with uncertainty using reflective writing. As a ground for our findings, we will first discus...

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