22. Adaptive Instructional Systems

Ok-choon Park

U.S. Army Research Institute

A central and persisting issue in educational technology is the provision of instructional environments and conditions that can comply with individually different educational goals and learning abilities. Instructional approaches and techniques that are geared to meet the needs of the individually different student are called adaptive instruction (Como & Snow, 1986). More specifically, adaptive instruction refers to educational interventions aimed at effectively accommodating individual differences in students while helping each student develop the knowledge and skills required to learn a task. Adaptive instruction is generally characterized as an educational approach that incorporates alternative procedures and strategies for instruction and resource utilization and has the built-in flexibility to permit students to take various routes to, and amounts of time for, learning (Wang & Lindvall, 1984). Glaser (1977) described three essential ingredients of adaptive instruction. First, it provides a variety of alternatives for learning and many goals from which to choose. Second, it attempts to utilize and develop the capabilities that an individual brings to the alternatives for his or her learning and to adjust to the learner's particular talents, strengths, and weaknesses. Third, it attempts to strengthen an individual's ability to meet the demands of available educational opportunities and develop the skills necessary for success in the complex world.

Adaptive instruction has been interchangeably used with individualized instruction in the literature (Wang & Lindvall, 1984; Reiser, 1987). However, they are different depending on specific methods and procedures employed during instruction. Any type of instruction presented in a one-on-one setting can be considered individualized instruction. However, if that instruction is not flexible enough to meet the student's specific learning needs, it cannot be considered adaptive. Similarly, even though instruction is provided in a group environment, it can be adaptive if it is sensitive to the unique needs of each student as well as the common needs of the group. Ideal individualized instruction should be adaptive, since instruction will be most powerful when it is adapted to unique needs of each individual. It can be easily assumed that the superiority of individualized instruction over group instruction reported in many studies (e.g., Bloom, 1984; Kulik, 1982) is due to the adaptive nature of the individualized instruction.

The long history of thoughts and admonition for adapting instruction to individual student's needs has been documented by many researchers (e.g., Como & Snow, 1986; Federico, 1980; Reiser, 1987; Tobias, 1989). Since at least the fourth century BC, adapting has been viewed as a primary factor for the success of instruction (Como & Snow, 1986), and adaptive instruction by tutoring was the common method of education until the mid-1800s (Reiser, 1987). Even after graded systems were adopted, the importance of adapting instruction to individual needs was continuously emphasized. For example, Dewey, in his 1902 essay, "Child and Curriculum," deplored the current emphasis on a single kind of curriculum development that produced a uniform, inflexible sequence of instruction that ignored or minimized the child's individual peculiarities, whims, and experiences (1902/1964). Nine years later, Thorndike (1911) argued for a specialization of instruction that acknowledged differences among pupils within a single class as well as specialization of the curriculum for different classes. Since then, various approaches and methods have been proposed and attempted to provide adaptive instruction to individually different students (see Reiser, 1987, for early systems).

Particularly since Cronbach (1957) declared that a united discipline of psychology not only will be interested in organism and treatment variables but also will be concerned with the otherwise ignored interactions between organism and treatment variables, numerous studies have been conducted to investigate what kinds of student characteristics and background variables should be considered in adapting instruction to individuals and how instructional methods and procedures should be adapted to those characteristics and variables (Cronbach, 197 1; Cronbach & Snow, 1977; Federico, 1980; Snow & Swanson, 1992). It is surprising, however, to realize how little scientific evidence has been accumulated for such adaptations and how difficult it is to provide guidelines to practitioners for making such adaptations.

This chapter has four objectives: (a) selectively to review systematic efforts for establishing and implementing adaptive instruction, (b) to discuss theoretical paradigms and research variables studied to provide theoretical bases and development guidelines of adaptive instruction, (c) to discuss problems and limitations of the current approach to adaptive instruction, and (d) to propose a response-sensitive approach to the development of an adaptive instruction.