well, thank you so much for joining us today
. Doctor Burton, could you give us a little
bit of an overview of who you are, where
you work, where you live? I'm john Burton
I am Living in a small town of Blacksburg Virginia
. I am at Virginia Tech where I've been for
the last 35 years came basically directly here out of
my PhD problem. Um could you tell me a
little bit more about how you got interested in this
field? It was pretty much by accident. I
although I had published a couple of pieces, one
with Paul Morrow on needs assessment when I was a
grad student. And surely that after I got to
Virginia Tech, I worked with terry Wildman on a
piece with learning theory and design. Uh huh.
In which by the way we used the phrase the
new cognitive psychology. So that goes back to the
late seventies I guess, but I really didn't have
an interest or background in it uh at all until
add Virginia attack. I'd come as an educational psychologist
and been told by the dean at that time that
educational psychology was not going to be, was not
going to take over. His college was not going
to be a player. I would never have a
doctoral degree so on and so forth. And I
hooked up with a friend of mine here, Mike
, moore Mike had a media program that did have
a PhD. So at some point the few souls
in its psych and the few souls and media joined
up together and I got involved in the existing PhD
at the time, which was technology. Media would
have, could you talk a little bit about the
primary focus of your work, of your research in
recent years? I've been involved mostly with, again
with the notion of theory and design and probably the
last bastion of behaviorism and the in the world until
gets reborn. And I think as you get older
you become more of a counterpuncher. So I I
follow a lot what my students and colleagues are doing
. I worked with them and probably don't lead them
as much as I did as a as a youngster
. So it it hops if you take a look
at the publication, could you talk a little bit
about how you became interested in behaviorism or even other
specific areas of your research? My background is in
psychology home. So at the time I was growing
up, behaviorism was really the primary theory, that
whole Spence was still being taught. Cognitive psychology came
in actually the first book in cognitive psychology was when
I was a master student. I mean it was
it was hot and I studied a lot of that
when I was at Nebraska just because people were teaching
seminars and trying to get into the latest and greatest
thing. Um, as a, I taught a
seminar with Jim Garrison years ago. Jim Garrison is
our, our philosopher and he's doing maybe one of
the leading doing scholars. And do we had what
he called a a sophisticated view of behaviorism and my
view of behaviorism off camera was always a naive view
of behaviors. We taught a course in cognitive psychology
together cognitive science. It was still again fairly new
when, when and really as believers I think in
cognitive science and I sort of became the devil's advocate
and argue the other side. And by the time
it was over, we were both both behaviors against
. You circled back. Okay. Could you speak
a little bit more about how you've experienced these transitions
and new learning theories. So you sort of begin
with behaviorism And you spoke just a moment ago,
a little bit about cognitive the sun coming on board
. And then could you say something even about constructivism
, how you experience these transitions? Your again when
I was coming up the notion of a grand theory
of of a learning theory that fits everything was was
the goal. And actually I took a course in
theory building and I took a whole course in whole
Spence and I took, you know, um theory
tended to be much more important in in those days
. Uh when we got into cognitive psychology, uh
at least initially it was it was a loosely bound
information processing thing made up of sort of many hypotheses
. It was more, it was more uh huh
pieces and parts that were tested rather than anything that
fit together in a sort of holistic way that evolved
over time. But it's still very um people can
plug pieces in and out and we'll have when cognitive
psychology, I'm sorry when constructive it and first hit
to sing. My first reaction was Yeah. Alright
, that's that's all true. We knew that I
didn't really realize that so many people didn't think that
that meaning was constructed, that perception and memory was
constructed. But as soon as I did, you
know, I can remember saying to my colleagues,
well this is great, we're gonna be all behavior
, assume we're all coming back. This is this
notion of interaction and whatever is what behaviorism is all
about. At least Anything after 1940 or whatever of
it didn't work out, it didn't work out that
way, you know? So so that's when I
when I probably became more when I began to push
back more with uh probably where cognitive ism was sort
of a loose collection of theoretical notions, constructivism was
none of that. There was more of a philosophy
or pedagogy or orientation with that at its center.
The notion that there is people can look at the
same thing and see different meaning. And as I
said, we knew that since Psychology at least since
the 1880s. And I would guess in philosophy,
could you describe your research interests when you started your
career and then maybe talk about how those change as
your career developed? I spent the first uh huh
. 15 years of my career studying basic memorial processes
, small level cognitive stuff. And then as a
result of the college, I began working with here
now retired jerry Niles who was a reading guy.
I began to tie up some of what I knew
about memory and paradigms that were that you could research
basic memorial processes with reading. So we began to
look at oh how different how levels of processing,
for example, was actually kind of big again,
I guess, and and some iteration. But the
notion that people process things more deeply and and and
in reading you can do manipulations. I was coming
out of something called Math magen IX and you know
, you could add questions or boldface or how figures
worked or something that would cause it to be more
memorable. Um But in my career I once,
once I got started in basic memory, even when
I began to move into our area, I wanted
to make full professor and I didn't want to lose
that line. So I stayed into, I stayed
in memory for oh 58 years after I wanted to
do it, to be honest with you, I
was ready to do something else. Hello. But
if you take a look at that at that point
, at that point after 15 years or so in
my career began to I left that work and never
did it again. Uh interestingly I never saw how
it could relate to what we do. I as
I look at what goes on now with cognitive loads
and whatever. 15, 20 years after we were
talking about cognitive loads. If I had not since
I was a drug yeah that that relates we could
do that but I didn't have enough sense. I
didn't and in all fairness, I didn't know anything
about our area really. You know, I was
just flying by the seat of my pants. Maybe
I can ask you a little bit about how maybe
some of your early experiences, maybe even earlier jobs
influenced choices and um arguments you may have been thinking
about as you moved along in your career. Well
, as I said, I did have a taste
for for uh Instructional Design Technology in a couple of
ways. one I had gone to work after at
the end of my doctoral program. And for a
little while afterwards with an outfit called University of Mid
America and University of Mid America was a big project
ah 8 10 university consortium to develop materials to be
delivered at a distance to our target audience, A
33 year old woman and two kids and Cozad Nebraska
. So we were trying to we were trying to
put together stuff that could be delivered by newspaper and
tv. And what happened, I was on the
fringe of that because I was actually working on the
evaluation sign that was much closer to my strength I
was aware of of the designers and what they were
doing. T. A. G. Was out
there. Gary moore Morrison was out there uh Fran
Aversa was out there, bo valence was out there
. We had a bunch of people that eventually became
names in in uh design and or evaluation. So
that gave me sort of a taste. But as
I say I was my whole career bachelors and psychology
and I did a master's degree at all my state
and psychology sacramento. And then I I wanted to
uh educational psychology at Nebraska. Uh The only other
job I really took at a college university level was
was at Southwest Missouri State after I finished my Masters
and really I just wanted to see whether I wanted
to hang around academics, whether I really wanted to
do that. And my job was teaching only I
hadn't really thought, I hadn't even thought about doing
research. I yeah I went down there and talk
for a couple of years, taught psychology courses,
introductory side courses and adjustment and things like that.
I'm not sure where I was going to go with
all this, but that as I say, then
I came here for 35 years and it really was
a matter of the colleagues that I was working with
when I was working with jerry Niles and terry wall
me. We did a lot of work with Reading
with Niles with mom and he was very much a
and I applied kind of it's a kind of guy
uh although we argue the opposite when we're talking about
introductions, introductions, he would argue more theory and
I would argue teach these kids what to do when
they get out into the schools. But that sort
of got me. And then and then I had
I had some very good students early on and they
sort of shape your career. So could you speak
to some of the important trends and I. D
. That you saw throughout your career, and then
maybe also follow up with where you see I.
D. Going in the future. I think in
the beginning when I first became aware of designers thought
much about it, uh we were very much coming
out of the programmed instruction era, still in it
. To some extent. I studied in graduate school
, the early computerized system ticket and Planet and played
on whatever. Excuse me. Um, but at
that time it was really kind of about you,
tell me what you want, your people to learn
and you tell me how much money I have and
I'll get them there. So out come the idea
that we could predict an outcome pretty much guarantee it
uh wasn't was central to what to what design was
about at that time, um transition, there was
there was some social trends that happened. For one
thing it was an all male uh bastion. The
first, the first conference I went to an informal
conference PDT Maybe 120 people and one of them was
a woman. I mean I didn't see that now
. Now the balance has shifted. So it's it's
probably a majority maybe women at this point, but
certainly it's not not the way it was. It
also shifted. In terms of in the beginning everything
was quantitative, everything was best of all worlds.
Experimental qualitative began to work its way in. We
had uh huh right Google was here a visiting scholar
for for a year and uh began to introduce the
whole notion of quality of data as an evaluator.
And as evaluated it always used to evaluate a use
quality of data, but it never occurred to me
to try to do that as a researcher. And
that that trend sort of sort of changed where we're
going to kind of questions we're going to ask.
Um the rise of cognitive theory of course. But
then constructive isn't probably mhm. Any any sort of
last notion that we're going to predict outcomes. God
uh watered down even further. When we got to
constructivism, uh outcomes became a little bit more of
a moving target because you were rather than rather than
accepting as I would that there's always variation This time
we were actually going to try to do it.
You know, I've tried to work with students where
you say, tell me how you would keep people
from constructive, what what repressive things could you do
to keep these people from constructing? And it's very
hard to come up with an environment like that,
that wouldn't put you in jail before. It's all
over of recent trends, probably we we moved when
I came in and uh cognitive psychology was beginning to
catch on theory was it was not really terribly powerful
in the area, It was more of a create
models sort of an area where lots and lots of
models and everybody was sort of producing them. Um
that's that shifted theory has become more important. And
one of the things that's done is taking us back
up with psychology. So uh at our university and
that many you see people uh either evolving uh or
devolving depending on who you're talking to into, into
the learning sciences and my more a more psyche approach
to the way we do business and a more psych
central approach to how how people learn. And that's
, that's also a big shift and education generally from
teaching to learning in the world. Could you talk
a little bit about the people that have really influenced
your growth as a scholar and how they may have
and how they've directed your um, you're thinking in
your scholarship, whether it's colleagues or even students professionally
, the people that, you know, I'm a
David Jonathan 30 some years ago and and we we
were friends for for that period of time. He
, I wouldn't say we influence each other very terribly
much so. Uh, but actually, David,
uh some of David's work uh later in problem solving
with, similar to some stuff that I had done
uh huh a few years before that with Doctor Azuma
Guerra who was was our director, she was one
of my students, so she had an influence and
and her dissertation took me into that area, uh
, colleagues here guys like mike moore jerry and I
was like I said in reading Terry Wildman and it's
like they had a great, great influence on me
um current guys that I pay attention to are still
old guys. I mean they're still by can often
and I, I think a lot of his work
and what he does and uh huh the hotel is
a person and as a scholar, um as I
say, my whole, as I've gotten over my
whole, I don't know if you just get more
often as you get older, but my whole approach
has been more to push back and counterpunch against the
prevailing theory or whatever. And I've I'll do better
working with, uh, I'll do better uh,
with students. I tend to follow that, I
tend to get into what they're doing more than impose
what I'm doing on there makes sense. But obviously
, some of the great students here, my korean
branch, it at Uh huh. Georgia Barbara Loki
is one of ours. We were a lot of
good students who always leave a mark always. What
would you say is the greatest accomplishment in your career
? Probably the best thing I've done with my students
. I've enjoyed, I've enjoyed that more than anything
else in my career. Oh, to see them
succeed as is always a very, very good feeling
and I was really blessed with great, great college
. I've always had good colleagues to work with and
, you know, as people, students leave and
they look at things are important. What is this
, what are the benefits like at this job?
You know what? Mhm. What kind of work
do they do? Or so on? And so
forth? If you can find the right place to
be and you've got good people, the rest will
sort of take care of itself. Okay. How
would you like to be remembered in the profession?
Oh. Uh huh. If if I and remember
I have a couple of pieces on the board now
again in behaviorism but I guess I'd like to be
remembered as I told you. So as we begin
to look at the mechanisms that really makes sense under
constructivism uh If that survives as an orientation or we
take a look at magnification and compensate based education,
some of things that are just shiny and new and
spiffy now but are are all grounded in the other
B. Word. Uh huh. I'd like to
, you know again I like to be when when
people look back to say that guy told us.
Uh huh. Well then here's my off book follow
up to that. So um do you think behaviorism
will rise again? And if so what would it
look like in the latest iteration and by, you
know, will be accepted people? I think it
can rise again. I think it would take an
extreme shift. It's a very eagerness point of view
. It's uh huh We have awareness and we have
trouble believing that it all follows a certain mechanism that's
fairly basic from Yeah, plenary at people or whatever
, that they all respond to the same rules.
So we get to a point in the in the
evolutionary scale, we like to say, oh there's
a lot of there's so much going on in there
that's got to be important. Somebody once said,
if you make something an animal itself aware, you
probably ought to make them delusional because they have this
this existential crisis if they really thought about what controls
your life. Uh I think it's being done now
in many respects and people and then uh alright situated
cognition. Yeah. Okay, isn't that the same
as the stimulus context or or you know, it's
it's uh uh interaction? Well, isn't that isn't
on a social uh give and take of response and
feedback. And I think what what holds it back
now is that people have this real doggy notion of
what uh behaviorism is. They think of Pavlov and
classical conditioning and uh yeah, the stuff done in
the twenties or whatever, twenties and thirties. And
uh if you look at the the so called radical
behaviorism or selective ist behaviorism from Skinner and the again
, running from about the forties, it's not like
that at all. It's more like evolution, behaviorist
or or selected because they work, you know?
Oh it's not so much a matter of the giraffes
gonna going to grow a longer neck because that's where
the leaves are, but if growing longer and that
allows you to get to the leaves over time,
that's going to happen. Well it's if people are
top behaviors that are successful in the environment that they
are in at the time, they'll learn. It
doesn't Uh huh. It doesn't it doesn't matter to
me what you whether you call it negotiation or free
operate, interchange or whatever. There's people are trying
to trying to succeed in that conversation. They wanted
to, they wanted to keep going and they want
it generally. Uh and if they don't think they
have mechanisms for trying to shut it down but they
don't want to keep it going. And uh you
know, teaching learning situation, you're trying to shape
the other guy around at some point. You're gonna
say, hell no, that's not constructivism. That's
you'll if not punish you at least withdraw anything.
It's at all reinforcing and make them uh, come
around to your point of view that won't be different
. Okay. All right. Okay. Well,
I have one last question to ask. Okay,
is there something that a story you would like to
tell or something you'd like to say? I haven't
been able to ask you or you just want to
have on the record? No, you don't want
to say I told you. So, one last
time she survived at that point, I really was
, you know, I mentioned Dave here for johnson
. He he did me a big favor when he
was put together that first hand book and he gave
me a platform to to write probably the, the
best, the best piece. The big, the
best thinking I've done about here is a very,
very long time. And that piece, although they
don't use that stuff anymore, We want more of
a, a pop view of behaviorism because people don't
read it anymore. But uh, it's kind of
like the game where people whispered each other to get
around the circle and the notion of what behaviorism is
, it's very distorted when it comes around. Uh
, that piece gave me a chance to, to
say what I knew about your terrorism. And uh
, I'm very grateful for that was at the time 410 --> A:middle L:90% .