I really hated the title and wasn't expecting much as a consequence, but this turns out to be a pretty good paper, readable, informative and insightful. David Merrill's quest is for "an integrated body of research that supports... interrelated principles (of learning) as a whole," where the principles consist of five major categories: demonstration, application, task-centered, activation and integration. Whether this works as a taxonomy is open to debate (and I would argue there is some cross-categorization at work here). Still, from these principles Merril advances a set of hypothesized performance inprovements based on testing with specific learning outcomes in complex tasks. Of course, a good part of the theory is embedded in the testing methodology; "Instruction requires a specific goal to acquire a specific skill," he writes, and "it is necessary to be clear about the type of learned performance is prompted by these principles." Hence, most informal learning is not even testable via this methodology, and so is unlikely to emerge as a viable alternative. Well, instructors measure instruction, I guess, but empirical advance is not going to be possible until we can measure learning.
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