Seven ‘all-embracing’ frameworks

Introduction

The frameworks included in this chapter are ambitious in scope in that

they seek to provide a comprehensive account of how people think

and learn in a broad range of contexts. Four of them cover the

psychomotor as well as the cognitive domain and all present a

‘whole-person’ psychological account of thinking and learning, in

that they deal with motivational influences as well as with the structure

of cognition. While they tend to treat thinking and learning in terms

of individual psychology, in four frameworks (those of Romiszowski,

Wallace and Adams, Jonassen and Tessmer, and Hauenstein) the domain

of social learning is also considered.

Another common feature of these frameworks is that they all

use metacognition and self-regulation (or closely-related ideas) as

explanatory constructs, whether the authors are psychologists or

educators. Rather than simply listing skills or skill areas, the authors

of these frameworks are concerned with the deliberate use of skills

in problem-solving, decision-making and other forms of produc-

tive thinking, especially when that use is planned, monitored and

evaluated.

There is an inevitable amount of overlap between the frameworks

for thinking that we have classified as ‘all-embracing’ and those

assigned to other family groups. However, the ‘all-embracing’ frame-

works can be distinguished from most members of the critical think-

ing’ family in that they are not simply concerned with ‘higher-order’

thinking, but also deal with acquiring and building knowledge and

understanding through action, sensation, perception and memory.

Although instructional design is an acknowledged aim of most of the

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