Merrill’s Aesthetic Vision

This chapter draws out the aesthetic underpinnings of Merrill’s work within the instructional designDesign field by probing into the unfathomable gap between instruction and learning based on the imagery of Karl Popper’s[aut]Popper, K. “unended quest.” The ultimate reference for Merrill’s aestheticsAesthetics is drawn from John Dewey’s[aut]Dewey, J. classic text, Art and ExperienceArt and Experience, sifted through Garrison’s Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire and the Art of TeachingDewey and Eros Wisdom and Desire and the Art of Teaching, in which the power of the poetic is embodied in everyday experience. This aestheticsAesthetics is played out in the passion that has underlain all phases of Merrill’s 50 + year career. This includes the central role that collaboration with graduate students and seasoned professionals have played in his research, institutional building at Brigham Young UniversityBrigham Young University (BYU), and model and project construction, especially the TICCIT projectTime-Shared, Interactive, Computer-Controlled, Information Television (TICCIT) project and hisInstructional transactions Instructional Transaction Theory (ITT)Instructional Transaction Theory (ITT). The chapter also includes a pedagogicalPedagogical/pedagogy discussion of the ITT framework focusing the relationship between “knowledge objectsKnowledge objects” and “instructional transactionsInstructional transactions as representative of his most advanced thinking. It concludes with a case study of an adult basic education student I tutored in basic math, incorporating the First PrinciplesFirst Principles/First Principes of Instruction and the instructional transactions into the discussion, and closes with an overall assessment of Merrill’s contribution to the field.