Constructivism (learning theory)

Constructivism is a set of assumptions about the nature of human learning that guide constructivist learning theories and teaching methods. Constructivism values developmentally appropriate, teacher-supported learning that is initiated and directed by the student.

History

This approach has not been widely valued in the past. This is due to the views that a play approach was seen as aimless, and of little importance. However, Jean Piaget did not agree with these traditional views. He saw play as an important and necessary part of the student's cognitive development and has even provided scientific evidence for his views.

Immanuel Kant 1724-1804
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who strongly influenced modern educational theory through his book Or, On Education
John Dewey
Jerome Bruner

Failure to distinguish between a constructivist approach and maturationist views

Constructivist views are commonly mistaken with the views of maturationist. "The romantic maturationist stream is based on the idea that the student's naturally occurring development should be allowed to flower without adult interventions in a permissive environment" (DeVries et al., 2002). Whereas, the constructivist stream (or the cognitive-developmental stream) "is based on the idea that the dialectic or interactionist process of development and learning through the student's active construction should be facilitated and promoted by adults" (DeVries et al., 2002).

Constructivist theory

Formalization of the theory of constructivism is generally attributed to Jean Piaget, who articulated mechanisms by which knowledge is internalized by learners. He suggested that through processes of accommodation and assimilation, individuals construct new knowledge from their experiences. Assimilation occurs when individuals' experiences are aligned with their internal representation of the world. They assimilate the new experience into an already existing framework. Accommodation is the process of reframing one's mental representation of the external world to fit new experiences. Accommodation can be understood as the mechanism by which failure leads to learning. When we act on the expectation that the world operates in one way and it violates our expectations, we often fail. By accommodating this new experience and reframing our model of the way the world works, we learn from the experience of failure.

It is important to note that constructivism itself does not suggest one particular pedagogy. In fact, constructivism describes how learning happens, regardless of whether the learner is leveraging their experiences to understand a lecture or attempting to design a model airplane. In both cases, the theory of constructivism suggests that learners construct knowledge. Constructivism as a description of human cognition is often confused with pedagogic approaches that promote learning by doing.

Pedagogies based on constructivism

In fact, there are many pedagogies that leverage constructivist theory. Most approaches that have grown from constructivism suggest that learning is accomplished best using a hands-on approach. Learners learn by experimentation, and not by being told what will happen. They are left to make their own inferences, discoveries and conclusions. It also emphasizes that learning is not an "all or nothing" process but that students learn the new information that is presented to them by building upon knowledge that they already possess. It is therefore important that teachers constantly assess the knowledge their students have gained to make sure that the students perceptions of the new knowledge are what the teacher had intended. Teachers will find that since the students build upon already existing knowledge, when they are called upon to retrieve the new information, they may make errors. It is known as reconstruction error when we fill in the gaps of our understanding with logical, though incorrect, thoughts. Teachers need to catch and try to correct these errors, though it is inevitable that some reconstruction error will continue to occur because of our innate retrieval limitations.

In most pedagogies based on constructivism, the teacher's role is not only to observe and assess but to also engage with the students while they are completing activities, wondering aloud and posing questions to the students for promotion of reasoning (DeVries et al., 2002). (ex: I wonder why the water does not spill over the edge of the full cup?) Teachers also intervene when there are conflicts that arise; however, they simply facilitate the students' resolutions and self-regulation, with an emphasis on the conflict being the students' and that they must figure things out for themselves. For example, promotion of literacy is accomplished by integrating the need to read and write throughout individual activities within print-rich classrooms. The teacher, after reading a story, encourages the students to write or draw stories of their own, or by having the students reenact a story that they may know well, both activities encourage the students to conceive themselves as reader and writers.

Specific approaches to education that are based on constructivism include:

Constructionism
- an approach to learning developed by Seymour Papert and his colleagues at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Papert eventually called his approach "constructionism." It included everything associated with Piaget's constructivism, but went beyond it to assert that constructivist learning happens especially well when people are engaged in constructing a product, something external to themselves such as a sand castle, a machine, a computer program or a book. This approach is greatly facilitated by the ready availability of powerful 'constructing' applications on personal computers. Promoters of the use of computers in education see an increasing need for students to develop skills in Multimedia literacy in order to use these tools in constructivist learning.

reciprocal learning
procedural facilitations for writing
cognitive tutors
Cognitively Guided Instruction
Anchored Instruction (Bransford et al) - Problems and approaches to solutions are embedded in a narrative environment
Cognitive Apprenticeship (Collins et al) - Learning is achieved by integration into a specific implicit and explicit culture of knowledge
Cognitive Flexibility (Sprio et al)
- a research and teacher professional development program in elementary mathematics created by Thomas P. Carpenter, Elizabeth Fennema and their colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Its major premise is that teachers can use students' informal strategies (i.e., strategies students construct based on their understanding of everyday situations, such as losing marbles or picking flowers) as a primary basis for teaching mathematics in the elementary grades.

Social constructivism

In recent decades, constructivist theorists have extended the traditional focus on individual learning to address collaborative and social dimensions of learning. It is possible to see social constructivism as a bringing together of aspects of the work of Piaget with that of Bruner and Vygotsky (Wood 1998: 39).

References

Bransford, J., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (expanded edition), Washington: National Academies Press.
Dalgarno, B. (1996) Constructivist computer assisted learning: theory and technique, ASCILITE Conference, 2-4 December 1996, retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/adelaide96/papers/21.html
DeVries et al. (2002) Developing constructivist early childhood curriculum: practical principles and activities. Teachers College Press: New York. ISBN 0807741213, ISBN 0807741205.
Piaget, Jean. (1950). The Psychology of Intelligence. New York: Routledge.
Scerri, E.R. (2003). Philosophical Confusion in Chemical Education, Journal of Chemical Education, 80, 468-474. (This article is a critique of the use of constructivism in chemical education.)
Wood, D. (1998) How Children Think and Learn. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. ISBN 063120007X.

External links

A journey into Constructivism by Martin Dougiamas, 1998-11.
Cognitively Guided Instruction reviewed on the Promising Practices Network

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