This is the first in a series of two articles examining the current status of instructional design (ID) scholarship and theory in four different cultures or traditions. In this article, the focus is on, first, ID models based on traditional behavioral theories of learning and, second, on models based on cognitive science and the learning sciences. While models from these two cultures are different, until recently the development of ID models was evolutionary. That is, the increasing influence of cognitively-based theories on ID work tended to be incorporated into behaviorally-based ID models without a great deal of difficulty. However , in the past 15 years, work in cognitive science and learning sciences has led to radically different forms of pedagogy that cannot be easily integrated into ID models that are firmly based on traditional ADDIE and Instructional Systems Design (ISD) models. The best known of the "new" cognitive ID models is Design-Based Research (DBR). (Contains 3 figures.)