Communal constructivism

Introduction

Communal constructivism is a pedagogic strategy conceived in the late 1990s by Bryn Holmes and collaborators that merges ideas from socio-constructivism and "sharing philosophies", e.g. knowledge building and connectivism.

“The theme, or educational philosophy, [...] is one we call ‘communal constructivism’, by which we mean an approach to learning in which students not only construct their own knowledge (constructivism) as a result of interacting with their environment (social constructivism), but are also actively engaged in the process of constructing knowledge for their learning community. [...] What we argue for is a communal constructivism where students and teachers are not simply engaged in developing their own information but actively involved in creating knowledge that will benefit other students and teachers. In this model students will not simply pass through a course like water through a pipe but instead, river-like, leave their own imprint in the development of the course, their school or university, and ideally the discipline. This will result in a gain for the institutions or course, but more importantly the students themselves will benefit.(Holmes et al., 2001) ”

“Communal constructivism is an approach to learning in which students construct their own knowledge as a result of their experiences and interactions with others, and are afforded the opportunity to contribute this knowledge to a communal knowledge base for the benefit of existing and new learners.” (Holmes et al., 2006:86)

“e-Learning takes the concept of ‘community of learners’ a considerable step forward by enabling less formal communities, that is, less formal than the organizational structure of business enterprises or a school or university would imply, to create a self-sustaining communal learning environment. We call this extension to the range of socio-constructivist variants ‘communal constructivism’ (Holmes et al., 2001), a process in which individuals not only learn socially but contribute their learning to the creation of a communal knowledge base for other learners. Online learning affords them the linked community, the knowledge bases, the knowledge-creation tools and the facility to provide their learning for others.” Holmes & Gardner (2006:76)

Foundations

According to Holmes et al. (2001), the concept of communal constructivism draws from several sources.

• socio-constructivism
• cognitive apprenticeship
• Field research on Japanes 'han' (“A han is made up of 3 or 4 students within a class and it is the responsibility of the han to make sure that all members are able to progress through the materials.”) (Holms 2001)
• Group work and peer tutoring
• PhD work

“We argue that a diverse range of techniques can, and should, be used to enrich this type of learning environment within which the focus is on learning with and for others. Peer tutoring and project-based learning are obvious techniques but we also advocate the ideas of cognitive apprenticeship, the publishing of information, flexibility in the time table, a radical look at the way in which assessment is done, and so forth.”