ABSTRACT
Vygotsky posited that there are two planes of activity in education, the intrapsychological of the learner and the inter-psychological of the learner’s relations with others in the role of teachers (Vygotsky 1987). At one level there is communication between students and teachers about the application of knowledge to problems and at another level communication within the learner and within the teacher about the application of knowledge to problems. The roles of teacher and learner are relative to, dependent on and interwoven with each other. They are interlocked communications from the opposite poles of the learner-teacher axis. We call the combined communication interaction of teaching and learning ‘instruction’ and since it is a communication system, an instructional system in the abstract is a paradigm.
