Constructivism

About constructivism

Opposing to behaviorism and cognitivism, learning paradigms which begin from a point of view that world external to the learner is objective and real and the learner needs to map it's principles and facts, constructivism as a learning paradigm1) Constructivism is a term often used in different fields with many different meanings. suggests that:

learning is not a passive, but an active, socially enhanced process of knowledge construction,

knowledge cannot (and need not) be transferred to the learner, but rather constructed by the learner,

the learner constructs his own subjective interpretation and subjective meaning of the objective reality by cognizing subject,

learning occurs through interaction of learner's prior knowledge (knowledge schemes), ideas and experience,

learning occurs in certain social, cultural and linguistic settings.

Teaching of a discipline should therefore:

focus not teaching of the body of knowledge, but experiencing the processes and procedures, and

use language as a tool that can help in guiding student's construction, but keep in mind that language users create subjective meaning based on their experience.

Although constructivist ideas can be tracked back to 18th century and authors like Giambattista Vico2) Giambattista, V. De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia. 1710. it mostly emerged in the 1970s3) Liu, C. H, and R. Matthews. Vygotsky’s philosophy: Constructivism and its criticisms examined. International Education Journal 6, no. 3: 386–399. 2005. and has been recognized as a paradigm, but also as a theory4) Press, Teachers College. Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice. Teachers College Press, 1996. . Today constructivism usually appears in the literature in a number of variants5) S. Sjoberg et al. Constructivism and learning. In Baker, E., McGaw, B. & Peterson P (Eds). International Encyclopaedia of Education 3rd Edition, Oxford: Elsevier, 2007. with two dominant variants3):

social constructivism (also known as personal constructivism or radical constructivism) derived from works of Lev Vygotsky and extended in works of Jean Lave, Allan Collins, John Brown, and Ernst von Glasersfeld, which suggest knowledge is situation-specific and context-dependent and that social environment has a key role in learning, and

cognitive constructivism (also known as realist constructivism) presented in works of authors like Jean Piaget or Jerome Bruner, which, since knowledge cannot be directly transmitted from person to person, focuses on individual's knowledge construction and learning through discovery.

Learning theories

Social Development Theory - Lev Vygotsky (1896 - 1934)

Stage Theory of Cognitive Development - Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980)

Situated Learning - Jean Lave

Communities of Practice - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger

Instructional design theories and learning models:

Cognitive Apprenticeship - Allan Collins

Discovery Learning - Jerome Bruner (1915 - )

Case-Based Learning

Simulation-Based Learning

Goal Based Scenarios

Problem-Based Learning

Inquiry-Based Learning

Incidental Learning

Criticisms

Constructivist instructional design models have been subjected to much criticisms lately6) Mayer, R. Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery learning? The case for guided methods of instruction. American Psychologist, 59, 14–19. 2004. 7) Kirschner, P. A, Sweller, J. and Clark, R. E. Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational psychologist 41, no. 2: 75–86. 2006. , mostly for promoting pure discovery-learning and minimally guided instruction. Richard Mayer6) has reviewed results of pure discovery-based learning experiments from 1950s to 1980s and concluded that every decade a new similar approach was invented under different name not making any significant difference. In his own words,

“Pure discovery did not work in the 1960s, it did not work in the 1970s, and it did not work in the 1980s... The debate about discovery has been replayed many times in education, but each time, the research evidence has favored a guided approach to learning.”.8) Mayer, R. Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery learning? The case for guided methods of instruction. American Psychologist, 59, p18. 2004.

Critics claim discovery-learning and minimally guided instruction, although more enjoyable to students9) Albanese, M., & Mitchell, S. Problem-based learning: A review of the literature on its outcomes and implementation issues. AcademicMedicine, 68, 52–81. 1993. ,

can lead to frustration due to failure or misconceptions10) Hardiman, P., Pollatsek, A., & Weil, A. Learning to understand the balance beam. Cognition and Instruction, 3, 1–30. 1986. 11) Brown, A., & Campione, J. . Guided discovery in a community of learners. In K. McGilly (Ed.), Classroom lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice (pp. 229–270). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1994. ,

are not as effective as guided learning12) Moreno, R. Decreasing cognitive load in novice students: Effects of explanatory versus corrective feedback in discovery-based multimedia. Instructional Science, 32, 99–113. 2004. ,

cause great cognitive load13) Tuovinen, J. E., & Sweller, J. A comparison of cognitive load associated with discovery learning and worked examples. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 334–341. 1999. 14) Sweller, J. Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12, 257–285. 1988. ,

provide worse results than worked examples15) Cooper, G., & Sweller, J. The effects of schema acquisition and rule automation on mathematical problem-solving transfer. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79, 347–362. 1987. 16) Sweller, J., & Cooper, G. A. The use of worked examples as a substitute for problem solving in learning algebra. Cognition and Instruction, 2, 59–89. 1985. ,

result in greater time consumption without results improvement9),

do not show statistically significant improvements in knowledge when implemented in medical schools17) Colliver, J. A. Effectiveness of problem-based learning curricula: Research and theory. Academic Medicine, 75, 259–266. 2000. , and

that these disadvantages will apply especially to novice learners18) Roblyer, M. D., Edwards, J., & Havriluk, M. A. Integrating educational technology into teaching (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1997. .

Although constructivism also includes learning methods with a certain degree of guidance and not just discovery learning and minimally guided instruction, critics claim that those methods still ignore proven benefits guidance, worked examples19), and induce a higher cognitive load resulting in lower resources available for learning due to orientation on finding a solution to a problem.

It is important to notice that these findings do not indicate that the initial assumptions of constructivism of a learner constructing his own representation of knowledge are wrong. The indicate that suggested instructional design consequences described in discovery learning models with minimal guidance do not necessarily follow. Today it is generally considered that advantages of guidance during instructional process begin to fade only when learners possess sufficient amount of prior knowledge to provide guidance by themselves7).

Bibliography

Ertmer, P. A., Newby T. J. Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4):50–72. 1993.

Liu, C. H, and R. Matthews. Vygotsky’s philosophy: Constructivism and its criticisms examined. International Education Journal 6, no. 3: 386–399. 2005.

Husen, T., and T. N. Postlethwaite. Constructivism in Education. In The International Encyclopedia of Education, 1:162-163. Oxford/New York: Pergamon Press, 1989.

Constructivism at Learning Theories. Retrieved March 2, 2011.

Sjoberg, S. Constructivism and learning. Invited contribution to Sjoberg, S., E. Baker, B. McGaw, and P. Peterson. International Encyclopedia of Education 3rd Edition, Oxford: Elsevier. 2007.

Read more

Press, Teachers College. Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice. Teachers College Press, 1996.

L. P. Steffe & J. Gale (Eds.). Constructivism in education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1995.

K. Tobin (Ed.). The practice of constructivism in science education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1993.

Phillips, D. C. The good, the bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivism. Educational researcher 24, no. 7: 5–12. 1995.