Instructional Design for Classroom Teaching and Learning

The field of Instructional Design is a discipline where research and theory are applied to the systematic design of instruction and instructional materials. It is often used in the military and corporate world, where the person designing instruction is usually not the one who teaches the material. Instructional Design as a discipline is relatively unknown in regular education. Zook attempts to address a gap in the literature with this book. He notes, "this book is firmly grounded in the field of systematic instructional design, an approach to teaching that has yielded impressive results in business, industry, and military educational settings for several decades, but curiously, has had virtually no significant impact on K-12 schooling" (p. xvii). This book has proved invaluable to me. I am a K-5 teacher in a doctoral instructional design program. For me, this book has mediated the differences between the application of instructional design in the corporate world and in general education. Most of my profs are operating in the business world with their theories and methodologies. They have no experience in regular education and often have difficulties understanding how instructional design in the regular educational world must differ from business. They understand the difference in context, yet cannot envision the difference in application. This book is NOT a book of quick tips for the starting teacher. This book is NOT a cookbook approach to lesson planning. This book DOES integrate Instructional Design best practices in the corporate world with those of the general education world. This book is a gold mine, provided you understand what it is.