Clarifying functional contextualism: A reply to commentaries

Several prominent researchers and theorists in the field of instructional design and technology provided commentary on my article, "Constructing a Pragmatic Science of Learning and Instruction with Functional Contextualism" ( Fox, 2005). Some of the important issues raised by those commentaries are addressed briefly in this reply. In particular, further clarification is provided regarding the distinction between theory and philosophy, the relation between functional contextualism and objectivism, the empirical basis and applications of relational frame theory (RFT), and the analytic goals of functional contextualism and instructional design.