ABSTRACT
At the time of writing, there is an animated debate which has apparently split the educational world-both teachers and researchers-into two ideological factions. The first faction is depicted as old-school pedagogues who believe that all teaching and instruction should be based upon classical, sage-on-the-stage, expository and didactic approaches of universal truths. The second faction is depicted as fuzzy-brained social constructivists who believe that nothing is true and that learners can only learn by constructing their own knowledge and behaviors through undirected experiences. This debate has infiltrated every pore of our discussions on teaching, learning, and education at scientific and professional conferences, in scientific and professional journals, and, in many countries, even the mass media and national politics. Of course we, as rational right-minded people, know that neither faction is correct and that the “truth” lies in the middle. For this reason I will try to avoid this ideological discussion and concentrate on a deeper underlying question, namely whether we are selling ourselves and our children short when we use or substitute an epistemology of a domain for a pedagogy for teaching in that domain. Before beginning, I need to define these two terms.
