The use of instructional development in the television series on economic education: give and take

"Instructional development," or the use of an organized schema for decision-making processes involving educational objectives, has been translated into several utilization models. The existing research on the application of instructional development in instructional television suggests that, although instructional development is accepted in principle, it is not properly implemented. This article summarizes the findings of a descriptive case study of the actual use of the Agency for Instructional Television (AIT) instructional development model in the development of Give and Take, a series on economics designed for students in grades eight through ten, and sponsored by the AIT with the collaboration of the Joint Council on Economic Education, and the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education. The outcome of the study shows that even a successful model has its problems. The model has to compromise with everyday realities such as funding necessities, different cultural contexts that the program should address, and the limitations imposed by the conditions in which the series would actually be used. These findings demonstrate that, although the AIT model is perhaps conceptually comprehensive and coherent, different problems may emerge that the model cannot solve. It seems that the strengths of a model almost invariably have problems as their counterpart. The results of this study point out that instructional development models, although adequate to deal with generalities, (i.e., define what steps are necessary for the proper development of an instructional television series) may perhaps be inadequate for giving directions of what to do in a specific context. It may be that any model is and ought to be shaped by the environment in which it is used. © 1984 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.