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==Definition==  
==Definition==  
Constructivism is a theory of learning based on the idea that knowledge is constructed by the knower based on mental activity. Learners are considered to be active organisms seeking meaning. Constructivism is founded on the premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world consciously we live in. Each of us generates our own "rules" and "mental models," which we use to make sense of our experiences. Learning, therefore, is simply the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences. Constructions of meaning may initially bear little relationship to reality (as in the naive theories of children), but will become increasing more complex, differentiated and realistic as time goes on.
Constructivism is first of all a ''theory of learning'' based on the idea that knowledge is constructed by the knower based on mental activity. Learners are considered to be active organisms seeking meaning. Constructivism is founded on the premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world consciously we live in. Each of us generates our own "rules" and "mental models," which we use to make sense of our experiences. Learning, therefore, is simply the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences. Constructions of meaning may initially bear little relationship to reality (as in the naive theories of children), but will become increasing more complex, differentiated and realistic as time goes on.


==Guiding principles of constructivism==
==Guiding principles of constructivism==


# Learning is a search for meaning. Therefore, learning must start with the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning.
The [http://umperg.physics.umass.edu/topics/constructivism/ physics education research group] at University of Massachussets defines the premisses of constructivism as epistemology as follows:
# Meaning requires understanding wholes as well as parts. And parts must be understood in the context of wholes. Therefore, the learning process focuses on primary concepts, not isolated facts.
 
# In order to teach well, we must understand the mental models that students use to perceive the world and the assumptions they make to support those models.
{{quotationbox |
# The purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her own meaning, not just memorize the "right" answers and regurgitate someone else's meaning. Since education is inherently interdisciplinary, the only valuable way to measure learning is to make the assessment part of the learning process, ensuring it provides students with information on the quality of their learning.
# Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted.
# Prior knowledge impacts the learning process.
# Initial understanding is local, not global.
# Building useful knowledge structures requires effortful and purposeful activity.
}}
 
== How Constructivism Impacts Learning ==


==How Constructivism Impacts Learning==
Constructivist learning theory does not necessarily imply that one must follow a "constructivist" pedagogical strategy. In other words, most researches firmly believe that knowledge is constructed, but some (e.g. main stream instructional designers) do not adopt an instructional design that is labelled "constructivist".


Constructive teaching is based on the belief that students learn best when they gain knowledge through exploration and active learning. Hands-on materials are used instead of textbooks, and students are encouraged to think and explain their reasoning instead of memorizing and reciting facts. Education is centered on themes and concepts and the connections between them, rather than isolated information.
Typically, a constructivist teaching strategy is based on the belief that students learn best when they gain knowledge through exploration and active learning. Hands-on materials are used instead of textbooks, and students are encouraged to think and explain their reasoning instead of memorizing and reciting facts. Education is centered on themes and concepts and the connections between them, rather than isolated information.


''Instruction'' : Under the theory of constructivism, educators focus on making connections between facts and fostering new understanding in students. Instructors tailor their teaching strategies to student responses and encourage students to analyze, interpret, and predict information. Teachers also rely heavily on open-ended questions and promote extensive dialogue among students.
''Instruction'' : Under the theory of constructivism, educators focus on making connections between facts and fostering new understanding in students. Instructors tailor their teaching strategies to student responses and encourage students to analyze, interpret, and predict information. Teachers also rely heavily on open-ended questions and promote extensive dialogue among students.
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===Trivial constructivism===
===Trivial constructivism===


The simplest idea in constructivism, root of all the other shades of constructivism described below, is [[trivial constructivism]] (von Glasersfeld, 1990), or ''personal constructivism''. In this principle, '''''Knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, not passively received from the environment'''''. ([[trivial constructivism|See More]]...)
The simplest idea in constructivism, root of all the other shades of constructivism described below, is [[trivial constructivism]] (von Glasersfeld, 1990), or ''personal constructivism'' or ''[[cognitive constructivism]]. In this principle, '''''Knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, not passively received from the environment'''''. ([[trivial constructivism|See More]]...)


===Radical constructivism===
===Radical constructivism===
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===Cultural constructivism===  
===Cultural constructivism===  


Beyond the immediate social environment of a learning situation are the '''''wider context of cultural influences, including custom, religion, biology, tools and language'''''. For example, the format of books can affect learning, by promoting views about the organisation, accessibility and status of the information they contain.  
Beyond the immediate social environment of a learning situation are the '''''wider context of cultural influences, including custom, religion, biology, tools and language'''''. For example, the format of books can affect learning, by promoting views about the organisation, accessibility and status of the information they contain. ([[cultural constructivism|See More]]...)
 
"[What we need] is a new conception of the mind, not as an individual information processor, but as a biological, developing system that exists equally well within an individual brain and in the tools, artefacts, and symbolic systems used to facilitate social and cultural interaction." (Vosniadou, 1996)
 
The tools (including language and other symbolic systems as well as physical tools) that we use affect the way we think. Salomon and Perkins (1998) identify two effects of tools on the learning mind. (1)they redistribute the cognitive load of a task between people and the tool while being used. For example, a label can save long explanations, and using a telephone can change the nature of a conversation.(2)the use of a tool can affect the mind beyond actual use, by changing skills, perspectives and ways of representing the world. For example, computers carry an entire philosophy of knowledge construction, symbol manipulation, design and exploration, which, if used in schools, can subversively promote changes in curricula, assessment, and other changes in teaching and learning.
 
Higher mental functions are, by definition, culturally mediated. They involve not a direct action on the world but an indirect one, one that takes a bit of material matter used previously and incorporates it as an aspect of action. Insofar as that matter itself has been shaped by prior human practice (eg it is an artefact), current action incorporates the mental work that produced the particular form of that matter. (Cole and Wertsch, 1996, p252)
Cobern (1993) writes of the world of subject matter and the internal mental world of the student as competing conceptual "ecologies", an image which invokes pictures of competing constructs, adaptation and survival-of-the-fittest. This is a somewhat more complex picture than radical constructivism. It highlights the need to consider both contexts fully, that of the student and that of the knowledge to be learned.


===Critical constructivism===
===Critical constructivism===


Critical constructivism looks at constructivism within a social and cultural environment, but adds a critical dimension aimed at '''''reforming these environments in order to improve the success of constructivism applied as a referent'''''.  
[[critical constructivism]] looks at constructivism within a social and cultural environment, but adds a critical dimension aimed at '''''reforming these environments in order to improve the success of constructivism applied as a referent'''''. ([[critical constructivism|See More]]...)
Taylor (1996) describes critical constructivism as a social epistemology that addresses the socio-cultural context of knowledge construction and serves as a referent for cultural reform. It confirms the relativism of radical constructivism, and also identifies the learner as being suspended in semiotic systems similar to those earlier identified in social and cultural constructivism. To these, critical constructivism adds a greater emphasis on the actions for change of a learning teacher. It is a framework using the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas to help make potentially disempowering cultural myths more visible, and hence more open to question through conversation and critical self-reflection.<br>
 
An important part of that framework is the promotion of communicative ethics, that is, conditions for establishing dialogue oriented towards achieving mutual understanding (Taylor, 1998). The conditions include: a primary concern for maintaining empathetic, caring and trusting relationships; a commitment to dialogue that aims to achieve reciprocal understanding of goals, interests and standards; and concern for and critical awareness of the often-invisible rules of the classroom, including social and cultural myths. This allows rational examination of the often implicit "claims to rightness" of the participants, especially those derived from social institutions and history (Taylor, 1996).<br>
===Constructionism===
Cultural myths that are prevalent in today's education systems include (Taylor, 1996):
 
[[constructionism]] asserts that constructivism occurs especially well when the learner is engaged in constructing something for others to see. ([[constructionism|See More]]...)
 
== Constructivist pedagogical theory ==


*The rationalist myth of cold reason - where knowledge is seen as discovery of an external truth. This can lead to the picture of the teacher in a central role as transmitter of objective truths to students. This philosophy does not promote clarifying relevance to the lives of students, but instead promotes a curriculum to be delivered.
{{comment | This section needs some rewriting ...}}
*The myth of hard control - which renders the teacher's classroom role as controller, and "locks teachers and students into grossly asymmetrical power relationships designed to reproduce, rather than challenge, the established culture".
Together these myths produce a culture that portrays classroom teaching and learning as "a journey through a pre-constructed landscape".  
Modification of such entrenched environments to reduce these myths and promote approaches based on constructivism is problematic, because of the self-reinforcing nature of administration, and the effects of wider culture. Taylor (1996) argues for an optimistic approach, and that teachers need to work collegially towards reconstructing education culture together rather than heroically on their own.


===Constructionism===
Constructivism is a way of thinking about knowing, a referent for building models of teaching, learning and curriculum (Tobin and Tippin, 1993). In this sense it is a learning philosophy and it may also become a teaching philosophy.


[[constructionism]] asserts that constructivism occurs especially well when the learner is engaged in constructing something for others to see:
=== Some common tenets ===
 
''"Constructionism shares constructivism's connotation of learning as `building knowledge structures' irrespective of the circumstances of the learning. It then adds that this happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity, whether it's a sandcastle or a theory of the universe... If one eschews pipeline models of transmitting knowledge in talking among ourselves as well as in theorizing about classrooms, then one must expect that I will not be able to tell you about my idea of constructionism. Doing so is bound to trivialize it. Instead, I must confine myself to engage you in experiences (including verbal ones) liable to encourage your own personal construction of something in some sense like it. Only in this way will there be something rich enough in your mind to be worth talking about."'' (Papert, 1990)
 
In studying constructivism, it has become apparent for Dougiamas that one of the most important processes in developing his knowledge has been by explaining and exploring his ideas in conversation with fellow students. He noticed, on reflection, that a great deal of his own development was fostered by participating in ongoing dialogue and creating "texts" for others to answer back to, whether in conversation or as a class presentation. He feels also that the construction of web sites and computer sofware (Dougiamas, 1999) has a similar effect. <br>
Gergen (1995) explores the use of the metaphor of dialogue to evaluate a number of educational practices. Particularly, he views knowledge as fragments of dialogue, ''knowledgeable tellings'' at a given time within an ongoing relationship. This relationship can be between learners, between a learner and a teacher, or between a learner and an environment experienced by the learner. Gergen describes a lecture as a conversation where, because the lecturer has already set the content, the student enters part-way through the dialogue and finds they have no voice within it. <br>
Steier (1996) looks into this dialogue process in more detail. Steier highlights the circularity of reflective thinking in social research, and presents a number of ways mirroring occurs between learners (like two mirrors facing each other) where each reciprocator affects the other. Awareness of such issues can help ''frame'' the dialogue used to communicate more effectively. <br>
For your own learning, this single essay is a poor vehicle. Here I am, stringing together words about constructivism in my word processor, and there you are, reading these words using your own cognitive framework, developed via your own unique background and frameworks of language and meaning. I am translating a variety of texts, using them to build an understanding on my own background, then translating my new understandings into building my own text, which you are deconstructing to reconstruct your own understanding. All these translations are introducing unknowns and I can never know if I am reaching you. In attempting to teach through this medium, all I can hope to do is to stimulate a curiosity in you to read further on these subjects, to write about them, to talk to people about them, and to apply them wherever possible in your own situations.


===Conclusions===
# Learning is a search for meaning. Therefore, learning must start with the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning.
# Meaning requires understanding wholes as well as parts. And parts must be understood in the context of wholes. Therefore, the learning process focuses on primary concepts, not isolated facts.
# In order to teach well, we must understand the mental models that students use to perceive the world and the assumptions they make to support those models.
# The purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her own meaning, not just memorize the "right" answers and regurgitate someone else's meaning. Since education is inherently interdisciplinary, the only valuable way to measure learning is to make the assessment part of the learning process, ensuring it provides students with information on the quality of their learning.


Constructivism is a way of thinking about knowing, a referent for building models of teaching, learning and curriculum (Tobin and Tippin, 1993). In this sense it is a philosophy. <br>
Constructivism also can be used to indicate a theory of communication. When you send a message by saying something or providing information, and you have no knowledge of the receiver, then you have no idea as to what message was received, and you can not unambiguously interpret the response. <br>
Constructivism also can be used to indicate a theory of communication. When you send a message by saying something or providing information, and you have no knowledge of the receiver, then you have no idea as to what message was received, and you can not unambiguously interpret the response. <br>
Viewed in this way, teaching becomes the establishment and maintenance of a language and a means of communication between the teacher and students, as well as between students. Simply presenting material, giving out problems, and accepting answers back is not a refined enough process of communication for efficient learning.   
Viewed in this way, teaching becomes the establishment and maintenance of a language and a means of communication between the teacher and students, as well as between students. Simply presenting material, giving out problems, and accepting answers back is not a refined enough process of communication for efficient learning.   
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*Allowing and creating opportunities for all to have a voice promotes the construction of new ideas.
*Allowing and creating opportunities for all to have a voice promotes the construction of new ideas.


A constructivist perspective views learners as actively engaged in making meaning, and teaching with that approach looks for what students can analyse, investigate, collaborate, share, build and generate based on what they already know, rather than what facts, skills, and processes they can parrot. To do this effectively, a teacher needs to be a learner and a researcher, to strive for greater awareness of the environments and the participants in a given teaching situation in order to continually adjust their actions to engage students in learning, using constructivism as a referent.
A constructivist perspective views learners as actively engaged in making meaning, and teaching with that approach looks for what students can analyse, investigate, collaborate, share, build and generate based on what they already know, rather than what facts, skills, and processes they can parrot. To do this effectively, a teacher needs to be a learner and a researcher, to strive for greater [[awareness]] of the environments and the participants in a given teaching situation in order to continually adjust their actions to engage students in learning, using constructivism as a referent.


==See Also==
=== Constructivist learning environments ===
[[socio-constructivism]], [[discovery learning]], [[web quest]],...


Most educational technologists that adopt some kind of constructivist stance also believes in [[collaborative learning]] (see [[socio-constructivism]], [[CSCL]] etc.), [[constructionism | construction]] and that learning is siutated (see [[situated learning]]).
E.g. Jonassen and Land (2002) suggests three cornerstones for constructivist learning environments:
* Context
* Construction
* Collaboration.
This minimal set can be expanded, e.g. in Marcelo Milrad's (2002) [[Instructional design model]] for interactive learning environments (ILEs), we find the following elements and that can be enhanced with technology.
*  Authentic activities: presenting authentic tasks that conceptualise rather than abstract information and provide real-world, case-based contexts, rather than pre-determined instructional sequences.
* Construction: learners should be constructing artefacts and sharing them with their community;
* Collaboration: to support collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, as opposed to competition among learners for recognition;
* Reflection: fostering reflective practice;
* Situating the context: enables context and content dependent knowledge construction; and,
* Multi-modal interaction: providing multiple representations of reality, representing the natural complexity of the real world.
Many such list exist (see also the entry on [[socio-constructivism]]), but there is no clear definition of what we mean by constructivist learning environments. They certainly can be distinguished from [[behaviorism | behaviorist]] designs, but within distinctions may become quite subtle. As a more clearcut example we cite Hay and Barab's distinction of apprenticeship and constructionist learning environments: {{quotation | In the end, we believe the differences lie in whether the learning environment has a community-centered focus or a learner-centered one. Both environments share authenticity of practices and goals, ownership of the environment by the learners, and a focus on project outcomes rather than tests. Community-centered environments focus on imparting fixed community practices, and learners are engaged in activities with well-defined goals and subgoals. The definition of success, for the learner, is becoming a community member, and the mentors are invested both in learner development and the quality of the outcome.Learner-centered environments focus on learners' developing emergent skills, where goals are ill defined, where the success is the development of a high-quality product, and where mentors are facilitators, but do not have added investment in the quality of their product.}} (Hay and Barab:318).
Regarding appropriate constructivist learning environments, see the category [[:category:educational technologies | educational technologies]] or the [[educational technologies]] article, and then entries like: [[CSCL]], [[C3MS]], [[Cognitive tool]], [[Hypermodel]], [[Hypertext]], [[Knowledge Forum]], LMs like [[Moodle]], [[WISE]], ...
== Links ==
=== Other articles of interest in this wiki ===
; Variants of constructivism
[[socio-constructivism]],  [[social cognitive theory]], [[cognitive apprenticeship]], [[situated cognition]], [[Situated learning]], [[distributed cognition]]
; Constructivist pedagogical designs
[[project-based learning]], [[problem-based learning]], [[inquiry learning]], [[WebQuest]], [[discovery learning]],
; Collaborative learning
[[collaborative learning]], the many facets of [[computer-supported collaborative learning]] including more recent trends like [[ubiquitous learning]] and [[shared space]]s.
; Community
[[community of practice]] and associated design models like [[knowledge-building community model]], [[scaffolded knowledge integration]]
=== External links ===
'''Topics'''
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructivism Constructivist epistemology (Wikipedia)]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_%28learning_theory%29 Constructivism (learning theory)]
* [http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/Skaalid/definition.html Constructivism], College Of Education
'''Institutions'''
* [https://llk.media.mit.edu/ LLK (MIT MediaLab)
* [http://en.lifelonglearninglab.org/ TULL] (Tsinghua)


==References==
==References==


Cobb, P. (1994) Where is the mind? Constructivist and Sociocultural Perspectives on Mathematical Development, Educational Researcher, 23(7), pp 13-20  <br>
* Costa, A. & Liebmann, R. (1995). Process is as important as content. Educational Leadership. 52(6), pp 23-24.   
 
Cobb, P. (1998) Analyzing the mathematical learning of the classroom community: the case of statistical data analysis, In: Proceedings of the 22nd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education 1, pp 33-48, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa <br>


Cobern, W (1993) Contextual Constructivism: The impact of culture on the learning and teaching of science. In: K. Tobin (Ed) The Practice of Constructivism in Science Education, pp 51-69, Lawrence-Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. <br>
* Dougiamas, M. (1998). A journey into Constructivism, http://dougiamas.com/writing/constructivism.html


Cole, M. & Wertsch, J. V. (1996). Beyond the individual-social antimony in discussion of Piaget and Vygotsky. Human Development, 39, pp 250-256. <br>
* Ellis, C. (1996). Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Emotionally about our lives. In: W.G. Tierney and Y.S. Lincoln (Eds) Reframing the Narrative Voice.  


College Of Education : http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/Skaalid/definition.html<br>
* Jonassen, D. (1991). Objectivism vs. Constructivism. Educational Technology Research and Development, 39(3), 5-14.


Costa, A. & Liebmann, R. (1995). Process is as important as content. Educational Leadership. 52(6), pp 23-24. <br>
* Jonassen, D. (1991, September). Evaluating Constructivist Learning. Educational Technology, 36(9), 28-33.


Dougiamas, M. (1998). A journey into Constructivism, http://dougiamas.com/writing/constructivism.html<br>
* Jonassen, D. (1994). Towards a constructivist design model. Educational Technology, 34(4), 34-37.


Dougiamas, M. (1999). Moodle - a web application for building quality online courses. http://moodle.com/. <br>
* Jonassen, D., Davidson, M., Collins, M., Campbell, J., & Bannan-Haag, B. (1995). Constructivism and computer-mediated communication in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education, 9(2), 7-26.


Ellis, C. (1996). Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Emotionally about our lives. In: W.G. Tierney and Y.S. Lincoln (Eds) Reframing the Narrative Voice.  
* Jonassen, D & Land, S. (2000). Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments. Lawrence  Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Funderstanding : http://www.funderstanding.com/constructivism.cfm <br>


Gergen, K.J. (1995) Social Construction and the Educational Process. In L.P. Steffe & J.Gale (Eds) Constructivism in education (pp 17-39). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. <br>
* Jonassen David H., Kyle L. Peck, and Brent G. Wilson (1998). Learning with Technology: A Constructivist Approach. Prentice Hall, ISBN 013271891X


Hardy and Taylor (1997), Von Glasersfeld's Radical Constructivism: A Critical Review, Science and Education, 6, pp 135-150, Kluwer  <br>
* Jonassen David H. & Land, Susan (1999). Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, ISBN 0805832165


McBrien, J.L. & Brandt, R.S.(1997). From The Language of Learning: A Guide to Education Terms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.d36b986168f3f8cddeb3ffdb62108a0c/<br>
* Jonassen David H. , Jane Howland, Joi Moore, and Rose M. Marra (2002), Learning to Solve Problems with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective (2nd Edition). Prentice Hall, ISBN 0130484032


Papert, S (1991) Preface, In: I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds), Constructionism, Research reports and essays, 1985-1990 (p. 1), Norwood NJ.  <br>
* Jonassen David H. (2005). Modeling with Technology: Mindtools for Conceptual Change (3rd Edition), Prentice Hall, ISBN 0131703455


Salomon, G. and Perkins, D. (1998) Individual and Social Aspects of Learning, In: P. Pearson and A. Iran-Nejad (Eds) Review of Research in Education 23, pp 1-24, American Educational Research Association, Washington, DC  <br>
* Jonassen, David H. (2007), Learning to Solve Complex Scientific Problems.


Steier, F. (1995) From Universing to Conversing: An Ecological Constructionist Approach to Learning and Multiple Description. In L.P. Steffe & J.Gale (Eds) Constructivism in education (pp 67-84). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. <br>
* Hay, Kenneth E. & and Sasha A. Barab, Constructivism in Practice: A Comparison and Contrast of Apprenticeship and Constructionist Learning Environments, The Journal Of The Learning Sciences, 10(3), 281-322. [http://inkido.indiana.edu/research/onlinemanu/papers/hay_barab.pdf PDF]


Taylor, P. (1996) Mythmaking and mythbreaking in the mathematics classroom, In: Educational Studies in Mathematics 31, pp 151-173  <br>
* McBrien, J.L. & Brandt, R.S.(1997). From The Language of Learning: A Guide to Education Terms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.d36b986168f3f8cddeb3ffdb62108a0c/


Taylor, P. (1998) Constructivism: Value added, In: B. Fraser & K. Tobin (Eds), The International handbook of science education, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic  <br>
* Milrad, Marco (2002), Using Construction Kits, Modeling Tools and System Dynamics Simulations to Support Collaborative Discovery Learning, Educational Technology & Society 5 (4) 2002, ISSN 1436-4522 [http://www.ifets.info/journals/5_4/milrad.html HTML]


Tobin, K. & Tippins, D (1993) Constructivism as a Referent for Teaching and Learning. In: K. Tobin (Ed) The Practice of Constructivism in Science Education, pp 3-21, Lawrence-Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.  <br>
* Tobin, K. & Tippins, D (1993) Constructivism as a Referent for Teaching and Learning. In: K. Tobin (Ed) The Practice of Constructivism in Science Education, pp 3-21, Lawrence-Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.   


Von Glasersfeld, E. (1990) An exposition of constructivism: Why some like it radical. In R.B. Davis, C.A. Maher and N. Noddings (Eds), Constructivist views on the teaching and learning of mathematics (pp 19-29). Reston, Virginia: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.  <br>
* Von Glasersfeld, E. (1990) An exposition of constructivism: Why some like it radical. In R.B. Davis, C.A. Maher and N. Noddings (Eds), Constructivist views on the teaching and learning of mathematics (pp 19-29). Reston, Virginia: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.   


Vosniadou, S. (1996). Towards a revised cognitive psychology for new advances in learning and instruction. Learning and Instruction 6, 95-109.  <br>
* Wilson, B. (Ed.) (1996). Constructivist Learning Environments: Case Studies in Instructional Design, Englewood Cliffs: Educational Technology Publications.  ISBN 013271891X


Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. <br>
* Wood, T., Cobb, P. & Yackel, E. (1995). Reflections on learning and teaching mathematics in elementary school. In L. P. Steffe & J.Gale (Eds) Constructivism in education (pp 401-422). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.  


Wood, T., Cobb, P. & Yackel, E. (1995). Reflections on learning and teaching mathematics in elementary school. In L. P. Steffe & J.Gale (Eds) Constructivism in education (pp 401-422). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. <br>
[[Category:learning theories]]
[[Category:Educational theories]]
[[fr:constructivisme]]
[[Category: Collaborative learning]]

Latest revision as of 12:08, 15 June 2017

Definition

Constructivism is first of all a theory of learning based on the idea that knowledge is constructed by the knower based on mental activity. Learners are considered to be active organisms seeking meaning. Constructivism is founded on the premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world consciously we live in. Each of us generates our own "rules" and "mental models," which we use to make sense of our experiences. Learning, therefore, is simply the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences. Constructions of meaning may initially bear little relationship to reality (as in the naive theories of children), but will become increasing more complex, differentiated and realistic as time goes on.

Guiding principles of constructivism

The physics education research group at University of Massachussets defines the premisses of constructivism as epistemology as follows:


  1. Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted.
  2. Prior knowledge impacts the learning process.
  3. Initial understanding is local, not global.
  4. Building useful knowledge structures requires effortful and purposeful activity.

How Constructivism Impacts Learning

Constructivist learning theory does not necessarily imply that one must follow a "constructivist" pedagogical strategy. In other words, most researches firmly believe that knowledge is constructed, but some (e.g. main stream instructional designers) do not adopt an instructional design that is labelled "constructivist".

Typically, a constructivist teaching strategy is based on the belief that students learn best when they gain knowledge through exploration and active learning. Hands-on materials are used instead of textbooks, and students are encouraged to think and explain their reasoning instead of memorizing and reciting facts. Education is centered on themes and concepts and the connections between them, rather than isolated information.

Instruction : Under the theory of constructivism, educators focus on making connections between facts and fostering new understanding in students. Instructors tailor their teaching strategies to student responses and encourage students to analyze, interpret, and predict information. Teachers also rely heavily on open-ended questions and promote extensive dialogue among students.

Assessment : Constructivism calls for the elimination of grades and standardized testing. Instead, assessment becomes part of the learning process so that students play a larger role in judging their own progress.

Faces Of Constructivism

Dougiamas (1998) describes the major "faces of constructivism" separately. Each of these types of constructivism are "points of view", perspectives loosely defined by a collection of writings of particular individuals in each case. These sections represent popular labels in constructivist literature used as shorthand to indicate these different groups of ideas.

Trivial constructivism

The simplest idea in constructivism, root of all the other shades of constructivism described below, is trivial constructivism (von Glasersfeld, 1990), or personal constructivism or cognitive constructivism. In this principle, Knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, not passively received from the environment. (See More...)

Radical constructivism

Radical constructivism adds a second principle to trivial constructivism (von Glasersfeld, 1990) :Coming to know is a process of dynamic adaptation towards viable interpretations of experience. The knower does not necessarily construct knowledge of a "real" world. (See More ...)

Social constructivism or Socio-Constructivism

The social world of a learner includes the people that directly affect that person, including teachers, friends, students, administrators, and participants in all forms of activity. This takes into account the social nature of both the local processes in collaborative learning and in the discussion of wider social collaboration in a given subject, such as science. (See More...)

Cultural constructivism

Beyond the immediate social environment of a learning situation are the wider context of cultural influences, including custom, religion, biology, tools and language. For example, the format of books can affect learning, by promoting views about the organisation, accessibility and status of the information they contain. (See More...)

Critical constructivism

critical constructivism looks at constructivism within a social and cultural environment, but adds a critical dimension aimed at reforming these environments in order to improve the success of constructivism applied as a referent. (See More...)

Constructionism

constructionism asserts that constructivism occurs especially well when the learner is engaged in constructing something for others to see. (See More...)

Constructivist pedagogical theory

This section needs some rewriting ...

Constructivism is a way of thinking about knowing, a referent for building models of teaching, learning and curriculum (Tobin and Tippin, 1993). In this sense it is a learning philosophy and it may also become a teaching philosophy.

Some common tenets

  1. Learning is a search for meaning. Therefore, learning must start with the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning.
  2. Meaning requires understanding wholes as well as parts. And parts must be understood in the context of wholes. Therefore, the learning process focuses on primary concepts, not isolated facts.
  3. In order to teach well, we must understand the mental models that students use to perceive the world and the assumptions they make to support those models.
  4. The purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her own meaning, not just memorize the "right" answers and regurgitate someone else's meaning. Since education is inherently interdisciplinary, the only valuable way to measure learning is to make the assessment part of the learning process, ensuring it provides students with information on the quality of their learning.

Constructivism also can be used to indicate a theory of communication. When you send a message by saying something or providing information, and you have no knowledge of the receiver, then you have no idea as to what message was received, and you can not unambiguously interpret the response.
Viewed in this way, teaching becomes the establishment and maintenance of a language and a means of communication between the teacher and students, as well as between students. Simply presenting material, giving out problems, and accepting answers back is not a refined enough process of communication for efficient learning. Some of the tenets of constructivism in pedagogical terms:

  • Students come to class with an established world-view, formed by years of prior experience and learning.
  • Even as it evolves, a student's world-view filters all experiences and affects their interpretation of observations.
  • For students to change their world-view requires work.
  • Students learn from each other as well as the teacher.
  • Students learn better by doing.
  • Allowing and creating opportunities for all to have a voice promotes the construction of new ideas.

A constructivist perspective views learners as actively engaged in making meaning, and teaching with that approach looks for what students can analyse, investigate, collaborate, share, build and generate based on what they already know, rather than what facts, skills, and processes they can parrot. To do this effectively, a teacher needs to be a learner and a researcher, to strive for greater awareness of the environments and the participants in a given teaching situation in order to continually adjust their actions to engage students in learning, using constructivism as a referent.

Constructivist learning environments

Most educational technologists that adopt some kind of constructivist stance also believes in collaborative learning (see socio-constructivism, CSCL etc.), construction and that learning is siutated (see situated learning).

E.g. Jonassen and Land (2002) suggests three cornerstones for constructivist learning environments:

  • Context
  • Construction
  • Collaboration.

This minimal set can be expanded, e.g. in Marcelo Milrad's (2002) Instructional design model for interactive learning environments (ILEs), we find the following elements and that can be enhanced with technology.

  • Authentic activities: presenting authentic tasks that conceptualise rather than abstract information and provide real-world, case-based contexts, rather than pre-determined instructional sequences.
  • Construction: learners should be constructing artefacts and sharing them with their community;
  • Collaboration: to support collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, as opposed to competition among learners for recognition;
  • Reflection: fostering reflective practice;
  • Situating the context: enables context and content dependent knowledge construction; and,
  • Multi-modal interaction: providing multiple representations of reality, representing the natural complexity of the real world.

Many such list exist (see also the entry on socio-constructivism), but there is no clear definition of what we mean by constructivist learning environments. They certainly can be distinguished from behaviorist designs, but within distinctions may become quite subtle. As a more clearcut example we cite Hay and Barab's distinction of apprenticeship and constructionist learning environments: “In the end, we believe the differences lie in whether the learning environment has a community-centered focus or a learner-centered one. Both environments share authenticity of practices and goals, ownership of the environment by the learners, and a focus on project outcomes rather than tests. Community-centered environments focus on imparting fixed community practices, and learners are engaged in activities with well-defined goals and subgoals. The definition of success, for the learner, is becoming a community member, and the mentors are invested both in learner development and the quality of the outcome.Learner-centered environments focus on learners' developing emergent skills, where goals are ill defined, where the success is the development of a high-quality product, and where mentors are facilitators, but do not have added investment in the quality of their product.” (Hay and Barab:318).

Regarding appropriate constructivist learning environments, see the category educational technologies or the educational technologies article, and then entries like: CSCL, C3MS, Cognitive tool, Hypermodel, Hypertext, Knowledge Forum, LMs like Moodle, WISE, ...

Links

Other articles of interest in this wiki

Variants of constructivism

socio-constructivism, social cognitive theory, cognitive apprenticeship, situated cognition, Situated learning, distributed cognition

Constructivist pedagogical designs

project-based learning, problem-based learning, inquiry learning, WebQuest, discovery learning,

Collaborative learning

collaborative learning, the many facets of computer-supported collaborative learning including more recent trends like ubiquitous learning and shared spaces.

Community

community of practice and associated design models like knowledge-building community model, scaffolded knowledge integration

External links

Topics

Institutions

References

  • Costa, A. & Liebmann, R. (1995). Process is as important as content. Educational Leadership. 52(6), pp 23-24.
  • Ellis, C. (1996). Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Emotionally about our lives. In: W.G. Tierney and Y.S. Lincoln (Eds) Reframing the Narrative Voice.
  • Jonassen, D. (1991). Objectivism vs. Constructivism. Educational Technology Research and Development, 39(3), 5-14.
  • Jonassen, D. (1991, September). Evaluating Constructivist Learning. Educational Technology, 36(9), 28-33.
  • Jonassen, D. (1994). Towards a constructivist design model. Educational Technology, 34(4), 34-37.
  • Jonassen, D., Davidson, M., Collins, M., Campbell, J., & Bannan-Haag, B. (1995). Constructivism and computer-mediated communication in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education, 9(2), 7-26.
  • Jonassen, D & Land, S. (2000). Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
  • Jonassen David H., Kyle L. Peck, and Brent G. Wilson (1998). Learning with Technology: A Constructivist Approach. Prentice Hall, ISBN 013271891X
  • Jonassen David H. & Land, Susan (1999). Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, ISBN 0805832165
  • Jonassen David H. , Jane Howland, Joi Moore, and Rose M. Marra (2002), Learning to Solve Problems with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective (2nd Edition). Prentice Hall, ISBN 0130484032
  • Jonassen David H. (2005). Modeling with Technology: Mindtools for Conceptual Change (3rd Edition), Prentice Hall, ISBN 0131703455
  • Jonassen, David H. (2007), Learning to Solve Complex Scientific Problems.
  • Hay, Kenneth E. & and Sasha A. Barab, Constructivism in Practice: A Comparison and Contrast of Apprenticeship and Constructionist Learning Environments, The Journal Of The Learning Sciences, 10(3), 281-322. PDF
  • Milrad, Marco (2002), Using Construction Kits, Modeling Tools and System Dynamics Simulations to Support Collaborative Discovery Learning, Educational Technology & Society 5 (4) 2002, ISSN 1436-4522 HTML
  • Tobin, K. & Tippins, D (1993) Constructivism as a Referent for Teaching and Learning. In: K. Tobin (Ed) The Practice of Constructivism in Science Education, pp 3-21, Lawrence-Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
  • Von Glasersfeld, E. (1990) An exposition of constructivism: Why some like it radical. In R.B. Davis, C.A. Maher and N. Noddings (Eds), Constructivist views on the teaching and learning of mathematics (pp 19-29). Reston, Virginia: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
  • Wilson, B. (Ed.) (1996). Constructivist Learning Environments: Case Studies in Instructional Design, Englewood Cliffs: Educational Technology Publications. ISBN 013271891X
  • Wood, T., Cobb, P. & Yackel, E. (1995). Reflections on learning and teaching mathematics in elementary school. In L. P. Steffe & J.Gale (Eds) Constructivism in education (pp 401-422). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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