Constructivism

Constuctivism is ”a philosophy of learning based on the premise that learning is an active process in which students construct new knowledge based upon their current/previous knowledge” (p. 76). Constructivits are Giambattista Vico, Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Lev Vygotsky, and John Dewey. There are at least three different strains (as per George Bodner, Michael Klobuchar, and David Geelan): personal, radical, and social and as per Richard Prawat, these can be consolidated into either modern or postmodern tendencies. This is the idea that knowledge construction is active (not passive) and that we accumulate knowledge and understand based on what our previous knowledge has shaped us (p. 77). According to Selber (2004), “constructivism rejects a key premise of both cognitivism and behaviorism: that meaning exists apart from experience” (p. 78). According to D. Scott Brandt, “Cognitivists seek to explain what goes on during learning, and constructivists seek to apply it to the classroom” (113)” (as cited in Selber, 2004, p. 80).

References:

Selber, S. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.