Landamatics Instructional Design Theory and Methodology for Teaching General Methods of Thinking.

This paper demonstrates how to design an instructional process aimed at teaching general methods of thinking, using the Landamatics theory and methodology. Landamatics is not a collection of lesson plans, but rather a general method of approaching the design of any effective course of instruction or any lesson plan. The method formulates general procedures to apply to teaching any specific knowledge and any cognitive process. Analysis of the problems many students have in being able to solve problems similar to those they were taught is that they have not been taught a general method of reasoning as a system of general instructions. In contrast to the empirical generalizations formed in the minds of student who have had conventional instruction, the Landamatics approach forms reliable, scientific, concept-congruous generalizations. This is illustrated through the example of teaching students to recognize right triangles. Several strategies are available to the teacher. One is to lead the students to make independent discoveries of the concept and the method of applying it. Another is to give the students all the information possible about the concept, and a third is to combine these two approaches. The teacher's strategy is chosen according to the objectives desired, but the first strategy appears to be the most valuable. Central to the Landamatics method are getting students to discover and realize the system of mental operations involved in the application of the concept and its definition, and then getting them to formulate a corresponding system of instructions. Providing practice and opportunities for the internalization of the method also follow in the Landamatics approach. This will bring about automatization of the mental operations of the method. Generalizations of this approach through several forms result in a method that can be applied to concepts with different logical structures of their characteristic features. Advantages of this general method are discussed. (Contains 4 tables, 3 figures, and 11 references.) (SLD)