Constructivism

Constructivism is a learning theory that is rooted in the idea that we construct new knowledge through our interactions with others and our environment. Constructivists believe that meaning or understanding is achieved by thinking about and reflecting on new information and relating it to our existing knowledge. Constructivism hinges on the idea that one is constantly trying to make meaning of new information and relate it to past understandings. 

There are 3 foundational researchers in the basis of constructivism.

Jean Piaget

Piaget's work began in the 1930's but gained a lot of traction in the field of education in the 1960's-1980's. His theories are based on the notion that humans create or construct knowledge through interactions between their experiences and ideas. He believed that the individual is at the center of the knowledge creation and acquisition process. Piaget's work influences teaching and learning because it reinforces that children do not come to the classroom as blank slates or empty vessels to be filled with knoweldge. Rather, they already have certain schema and constructs about the world which we can then use to further knowledge. 

Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky's work focused on the notion that we learn best through interacting with others. By working with others, learners create an environment of shared meanings. Vygotsky emphasized that culture plays a large role in cognitive development. Although he died in 1934, his work gained a lot of traction in the 1970's and 80's.

He coined the term "Zone of Proximal Development" which indicates a "just right" learning environment where a learner is taught with help from a More Knowledgable Other. Vygotsky's work has influenced teaching and learning because we know understand that we can largely influence learning when we can identify a student's Zone of Proximal Development and offer proper teaching and scaffolding to move that student towards autonomy. 

John Dewey

Dewey (1950's) and Vygotsky recognized the role of cultural forms and meanings in human thought. Just as Piaget and Vygotsky did not believe in rote memorization and repetitive lectures, Dewey recognized that when learners engage in real world activities they will be able to construct higher levels of knowledge through making meaning, embracing creativity, and collaborating with others. 

Implications of Constructivism on Instructional Design

An instructor who embraces constructivism must adopt a more hands-on approach to learning. The classroom or digital course work should be supportive of each individual learner’s thinking. 

To best nurture learning, instructors have to become "facilitators" and not "teachers." A facilitator helps the learner discover and own understanding of the content instead of explaining their knowledge a concept. Instead, the learner is actively engaged. The emphasis turns away from the instructor and the content and puts  the learner at the center of instruction. "A teacher tells, a facilitator asks; a teacher lectures from the front, a facilitator supports from the back; a teacher gives answers according to a set curriculum, a facilitator provides guidelines and creates the environment for the learner to arrive at his or her own conclusions; a teacher mostly gives a monologue, a facilitator is in continuous dialogue with the learners" (Rhodes and Bellamy, 1999).

Opinion on the Strengths and Limitations of Constructivism 

With regard to instructional design in the digital space, constructivism can be difficult to pull off. It can be a really powerful way to teach with a live classroom though!

In a live classroom environment, a skilled facilitator can navigate the meaning a learner is constructing in the moment and adjust his or her questions or guidance. If students are veering off course, the facilitator can adjust by asking questions to help students analyze why their thinking might be flawed. In a live environment, students come away with an understanding they created based on a carefully crafted learning design implemented by the facilitator.  I have frequently used constructivist methods for facilitating live math classes in grades 3-8. Constructivism is a fantastic approach to conceptually teaching mathematics to children because they are able to better retain concepts that they derived through social constructivism and with scaffolded support when needed (in their ZPD). When students are able to derive the concept and understand the underlying mathematics at work, they can do so again later if they cannot remember the procedure or skill in isolation. 

In an asynchronous environment, the facilitator is less aware of the learner's environment and schema. They cannot make "in the moment" moves to guide the learner because they may not be actively engaged with the learner. Instead, the facilitator or course designer must be aware of what typical mistakes a learner might make with that concept and provide appropriate scaffolding to assist the learner by approximating what most learners ZPDs might be.  At best, a course designer can approximate what the learner needs. If learning communities and discussion threads/forums are available, there may be opportunities for the learners to make connections based on the posts they see and create. The facilitator or course designer could interact on those posts as well but because there may be a delay in the posts and responses, constructing knowledge may be slower and less impactful in an asynchronous setting. I am still thinking about how constructivism could be a powerful approach to learning asynchronously.

Learning Scenario with Constructivism 

The facilitator would pose the following to middle school students: "Imagine that the principal is giving us $100 to have a class party. We decide that we would like to spend the money on cake, pizza, and soda pop. If cakes cost $15 each, pizza costs $10 each, and soda pops cost $1 each, how many different ways can you think of to spend exactly $100?"

Students would work in small groups to brainstorm and document all the ways they can think of to spend $100. Many of them would likely use trial and error and work together to find creative ways to spend the money. The facilitator would circulate and listen to conversations. If groups are struggling, base 10 blocks might be provided as a scaffolding strategy with the facilitator asking, "What might this flat 100 block represent? (the total we an spend). What might the 1 blocks represent? (the cost of 1 soda). What might the stick of 10 represent? (the cost of 1 pizza and also with five 1 blocks can represent the cost of 1 cake).  As another scaffolding strategy, the facilitator might also make paper cut-outs of images of cakes, pizzas and sodas for students to manipulate into groups but those would only be offered those to groups who demonstrate a need for that scaffold. This scaffold is particularly useful for students who are still learning English.  Most students would likely be able to come up with at least 1 way to spend exactly $100.  Students may begin to realize that increasing the quantity of one or two items results in a need to decrease the quantity of another in order to not exceed $100. 

Some students might ask the facilitator, "Can we only buy sodas? Can we only buy pizzas? Do we have to buy cakes?" These are questions that the facilitator should not answer, but rather prompt students to decide how to answer their own questions with a mathematical representation (e.g. C = 0, P=10, S = 0). The facilitator might ask, "Is this a solution? (yes) Is this a solution that would work for this classroom of students?"

Through this experience, students may get tired of writing out "cake, pizza, soda" and begin to naturally defer to using letters to represent the cost of each item (C, P, S). In a whole class debrief of the activity, the facilitator would then provide students with the formal knowledge of the word variable to represent an unknown amount. This is one opportunity to work on students' ZPD. The facilitator would ask them to write an equation that could represent any way to spend the $100. In other words, we know the cost of the cakes is 15C, the cost of pizza is 10P, and the cost of the soda is 1S or simply S. This is the perfect time to provide students with the formal knowledge of the word coefficient and have students define what the coefficient means for each variable in this case (it's the cost of each item). We could also define the word term to mean the combination of a coefficient and variable, although this would need to be done carefully to avoid having students overgeneralize that a term is always a variable and a coefficient. The facilitator would ask what we are doing with those sets of variables and coefficients (or terms) to get to $100. Most students would realize that we need to add them together. Therefore, the general equation of this scenario is 15C + 10P + S = 100. By knowing this equation, we can calculate any combination of quantities that might make sense to the numbers of students at the party or how we might want to spend the money. If it is within the students' ZPD, I might take it a step further and ask how we would write it if we had to spend less than $100 (15C + 10P + S < 100). 

Skills in the ZPD

By middle school, most students have had experiences with adding positive whole numbers. They have had experience with equality and the meaning of the equal sign. This activity is a high interest, real-world scenario that peeks students' curiosity and motivation. This is an activity that I created for my students and have facilitated many times over many years. I use this activity as a way to introduce a unit on algebraic equations. By giving students a hands-on, high interest experience and then defining key vocabulary through the experience, students better retain the meaning of the vocabulary. It also gives students a "just-right" experience with equality and maintaining that the amounts they calculate must remain equal to $100. If students are ready, I can begin to define inequalities with them as well by slightly changing the prompt as described above. I have found that by using this activity at the beginning of the unit, students are better able to access the more abstract material that happens later in the unit. I often reference this activity throughout the rest of the unit. 

Scaffolding Strategies in this Activity

I detailed in the activity that scaffolds may include offering Base-10 blocks and/or paper cut outs of images of the cakes, pizzas and sodas. The base ten blocks provide a way for students to represent and keep track of the costs "so far" when using a trial and error strategy. The paper cut outs can help students keep track of how many of each item they want.  If I were offering this activity in a digital space, I would have images of Base-10 blocks and/or the images on a Jamboard or FigJam for students to manipulate. 

Social Constructivist Strategy in this Activity

The nature of this activity is Social Constructivist because students are listening to each others' ideas and generating their own to share. Together, the group can come up with many viable ways to spend the $100. The conversations that occur during this activity are rich as students ask "Did we come up with this combination already?" or "Wait, if you made (this) combination, then that means we can also do (that) combination." Sometimes students aren't sure how to start this activity. One student in the group often gets the group going with one possible combination which launches other students' thinking into what else might work so they can contribute to the group. If students need extra motivation, I will sometimes prompt the group with, "Let's see which group can come up with the greatest number of possible combinations!" I don't offer a tangible reward, but often students are motivated to be "the group" who has the most. As we debrief as a whole group, I ask groups to share out one combination. As they do, I ask all students whose groups also found that combination. By the end of the activity, it's important for students to be able to define the vocabulary that they need for the unit and through this activity, they construct an experience with the vocabulary through social constructivism.