The Elaboration Theory was developed in the late 1970’s by Dr. Charles Reigeluth and his colleagues while at Syracuse University. The theory was designed to “extend the Component Display Theory (CDT) to the macro level.” (Reigeluth & Stein, 1983) It takes some guidance from Ausubel’s theory of subsumption, Bruner’s spiral curriculum, Gagne’s hierarchy theory, Norman’s web learning, and Merrill’s information-processing models (Ausubel, 1963; Bruner, 1966; Gagne, 1985; Merrill, 1978; Norman, 1973) . Reigeluth’s latest version of his Elaboration Theory takes into account his ideas that instructional design is going through a paradigm shift (Reigeluth, 1999) . There is a need for a change in instruction is due to the changes in society, from an industrialized to an information society.
The goal of Elaboration Theory is to help instructional designers and learners select and sequence medium to complex cognitive and psychomotor content in order to optimize learning.
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learners control the scope, the range of concepts, principles or procedure and sequence, of instruction
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learners determine the order in which the concepts, principles or procedures are presented
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Medium to complex kinds of cognitive and psychomotor learning
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holistic presentation of content and instruction
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teaches concepts, procedures, information, higher-order thinking, and attitudes together with related principles
The theory helps determine the method of instruction by distinguishing between task expertise, where the learner is expected to become an expert in a specific task, and domain expertise, where the learner is expected to become an expert in a specific subject matter.
There are three methods outlined in the elaboration theory: Conceptual elaboration sequence, Theoretical elaboration sequence, Simplifying conditions method
Conceptual elaboration sequence deals with concepts, objects and events, the “what” of subject matter. Theoretical elaboration sequence deals with principles, cause and effect, the “why” of subject matter.
The scope of these types of information can be explore to whatever degree the learner desires through either topical sequencing where one topic is learned at a time, or through spiral sequencing where the lowest level of several topics is learned before moving up to higher levels of the topics. .
The main accomplishment of the elaboration of theory is the simplifying conditions method (SCM). This method is designed for medium to complex cognitive and psychomotor learning. There are several key components to this method including simple-to-complex sequencing, learning-prerequisite sequences, summarizers, synthesizers, analogies, cognitive-strategy activators, and learner-control (Reigeluth & Stein, 1983) . The SCM starts with a simplified restricted version of a more complex task. This simple version still embodies most of the characteristics of the complex task. The learner learns how to complete the simple task and then progresses to a more complex task until the real-world task with no restrictions has been learned.
Other major characteristics of SCM include the introduction of instruction using an epitome, the most basic and fundamental ideas of a concept, principle or procedure and the elaboration of the epitome throughout the instruction. The epitome includes:
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a whole version of the task instead of reducing the task to individual skills
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a simpler version of the task
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a real-world application of the task
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a fairly common version of the task (Reigeluth, 1999)
Importance to Instructional Design
The Elaboration Theory is an important option for instructional designers because of its holistic instruction and heuristic task sequencing. As far as K-12 instructional use, the general idea of using an epitome to introduce concepts, principles or tasks and elaborating on these throughout instruction is an exciting possibility for instruction.
The Elaboration Theory is an important tool for any instructional designer to have in their tool box. I believe though that the theory may less effective in the current K-12 setting. The learner-control characteristic of the elaboration theory can be difficult to fully accomplish in the current educational system because of the amount of time and resources required to allow a learner to control the scope and sequence of his/her own learning. Also designing any of the sequences correctly requires more time than the typical teacher has available. However, in the future, this should be improved with greater, more effective use of technology.
Ausubel, D. P. (1963). The psychology of meaningful verbal learning. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Bruner, J. S. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Gagne, R. M. (1985). The conditions of learning and theory of instruction (4th ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Merrill, P. F. (1978). Hierarchical and information processing task analysis: A comparison. Journal of Instructional Development, 1(2), 35-40.
Norman, D. A. (1973). Memory, knowledge, and answering of questions. In R. L. Solso (Ed.), Contemporary issues in cognitive psychology: The Loyola symposium. Washington, D.C.: Winston.
Reigeluth, C. M. (1999). Instructional-design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (Vol. 2). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Reigeluth, C. M., & Stein, F. S. (1983). The elaboration theory of instruction. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models: An overview of their current status (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.