Epistemology and Instructional Theories

When discussing epistemology and instructional theories, I think it is safe to state that the latter would not exist without the former, obviously.  And just as there are varied understandings and theories concerning how we learn and retain information, there are even more theories about how to go about affecting learning and knowing.  Each instructional method or model attempts to leverage, typically, a specific understanding of learning to accomplish this goal.  There are however, those instructional methods which attempt to cover the gammet of several learning theories.  The focus has shifted from attempting to transmit distinct and often isolated bits of information based on methods leveraging behaviorism to affecting whole learning and long term cognition based on interacting and leveraging characteristics of learning described by the cognitive psychologists and anthropologists also known as constructivism.  Constructivism based instructional models tend to be more wholistic in nature, taking a "problem" oriented approach to instruction and offering the learner the opportunity to learn within the context of his\her cultural environment and leveraging their prior knowledge to generate an understanding and solution which fits within an existing schema or at least one that the learner has "updated" through the process of working through the problem.  Of all of the content included within this section of reading, I thought that one of the most interestingly accusing points was made by Jonassen as he discussed problem solving as a design for instruction.  Certainly this is an approach which has received a great deal of attention and focus in recent years as educators attempt to develop higher order thinking oriented learning environments, however I think Jonassen makes a point which is undeniable and holds a great deal of liability for educators.  He states that as problem solving has been used in instruction, specifically regarding story problems in mathematics, learners tend to bypass the intended affectiveness of the method by employeeing a "problem avoidance" strategy to solve the problems, which effectively nullifies the intended affect of the approach.  The damning underlying statement is that as educators we have become a major contributing factor this phenomenon by actually teaching our students "strategies" which allow them to bypass the power of the problem solving strategy; and of course we do this in the name of "teaching" our students how to be "successful" on standardized testing!  I am still contemplating the long term meaning of this and what it means for the validity of even worrying about different instructional strategies if all we are going to do as educators is find the easiest way around the issue to continue teaching as we have forever.