Constructivism is a pedagogical theory that gives priority to a learner’s point of view no matter how idiosyncratic it might be. According to Jean-Jacques Piaget, student’s opinion is a starting position for construction of new knowledge by overcoming the cognitive conflict between the existing internal structure (schema) and external unknown reality. Eliminating this conflict restores the so-called cognitive equilibrium (balance) characterized by the processes of assimilation of new knowledge into the existing schema and accommodation (e.g., change, modification, replacement) of previous schema based on newly learned knowledge and understanding. Another prominent scholar — Lev Vygotsky — added an important social dimension to constructivism emphasizing co-construction of knowledge and understanding. Vygotsky’s claim that a learner develops new knowledge and understanding through interaction with others expands the theory toward social constructivism.
Constructivism values the process more than the result. Piaget argues that scientific knowledge is not a static phenomenon; it is a process, more specifically, the process of continuous construction and reorganization.
Implementation of constructivism in the classroom requires rethinking of traditional instructional practices. For instance, learning objectives and learning outcomes should be designed around the key position of constructivism: knowledge cannot be transmitted to a student; it could be self-constructed by a student or co-constructed in the process of student’s interaction with others. That is why constructivists try to avoid the “imposing” terminology in the design of the learning objectives and outcomes, for example, teacher-directed actions such as “teach”, “cover”, “tell”, “show”, etc. Instead, constructivism encourages using student-centered language in the design of learning objectives and outcomes: “construct”, “engage”, “understand”, “justify”, “reason”, “reflect”, etc.
Student motivation should be driven by real life exploratory activities, which include but are not limited to searching, investigating, and solving sound socially relevant problems, especially those arising at school, in the neighborhood, within a community (e.g., environmental, economic, social, etc.). These types of problems and activities engage students in data collection, analysis, and problem solving that contribute to the well-being of their immediate environment.
Congruently, the content should be developed around those concepts and ideas that support students’ understanding, stimulate students’ reasoning, encourage students to share their assumptions, hypotheses and conjectures, motivate speaking out, involve students into meaningful dialogue and exchange of diverse viewpoints. Therefore, the classroom culture and environment should be built with an emphasis on student learning, student intellectual needs, student collaboration, and student success.
This type of student-centered environment is supported by the work of scholars. For example, the framework of the 5e model (Bybee et al., 2006) describes a social constructivist learning cycle, which helps students to build new understandings and draw ideas from prior experiences through the following five stages: engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate. The 5e model could be effectively used for engineering of learning in different formats: face-to-face, blended/hybrid, and distance learning.
The main objective of the “engage stage” is to engineer student learning via building their intrinsic motivation and involving students in the activity along with conducting pre-assessment of their prior knowledge and understanding. During this stage, students make connections between past, present and new learning experiences. At the “explore stage” students are directly involved in an inquiry based activity. This stage allows students to work collaboratively in teams, sharing and communicating their understanding through testing hypotheses, making predictions, and drawing conclusions. The major goal of “the explain stage” is to engineer student communication using individual and group presentations of what they have learned through the process of reflective thinking. The “extend stage” allows students to expand on the concepts, make connections and generalize the concepts. The purpose of the final “e” in the cycle — the “evaluation stage” — is to engineer on-going diagnostic process that allows both the teacher and the student to assess whether the desired level of understanding has been attained through implementation of well-designed rubrics, observation, interviews, peer assessment, portfolios, and inquiry-based learning products/artifacts. This stage also addresses students’ misconceptions and common mistakes.
Considering the key position of constructivism, the next question is how to become a constructivist teacher? First of all, a constructivist teacher is not just a teacher in a traditional sense; s/he is a facilitator, organizer, and coordinator of the problem based student learning. Constructivist teacher by his/her very nature is a teacher engineer. A constructivist teacher ensures favorable classroom environment for co-construction of students’ new knowledge and understanding and encourages student initiative and collaboration. In turn, students become co-designers of the instructional process sharing the responsibilities for achieving learning objectives and outcomes with the teacher.
In lesson planning, a constructivist teacher prefers to consider real life problems including the context and data from practical situations and original sources. Moreover, a constructivist teacher provides opportunities for students to collect such data by observing real life situations, searching related information on the web, surveying participants, etc. Figuratively speaking, a constructivist teacher should engage both hands and brains of students.
Concepts, theories, algorithms, and theorems are abstractions that human beings create as a result of discovery. Theory is a retrospection. Accordingly, in the learning process an abstraction should be a destination rather than a starting point. Therefore, constructivism suggests focusing on exploration first, understanding main concepts and major ideas, and only then memorization of algorithms, rules, and theorems. Moreover, a constructivist teacher designs learning objectives using the cognitive terminology to emphasize understanding: classify, justify, analyze, synthesize, predict, evaluate, etc.
A constructivist teacher allows students to take over teaching of some fragments of the lesson, change the direction of the classroom discourse, offer ideas on improving teaching and learning. Obviously, constructivist teaching requires not only easy content handling but also profound pedagogical knowledge. Knowing-to-act at the moment (Mason and Spence, 1999) becomes a key ability for a constructivist teacher. This will allow a teacher to depart from the rigid structure of a lesson and transfer the “reins of power” of leading the lesson to students while focusing on achieving learning objectives of the lesson. A constructivist teacher never reports his/her view first. Instead s/he listens to students’ viewpoints, explanations and justifications, involves students in a meaningful discussion, addresses and synthesizes diverse students’ views and only then offers his/her view on the issue as one of the possible views among others.
A constructivist teacher encourages the development of students’ critical thinking by considering opposing points of view, setting counterexamples, offering contradictions in order to promote a productive classroom discourse. S/he values good questions more than good answers. A constructivist teacher appreciates substantive, good, and ‘smart’ student questions. Moreover, a constructivist teacher often uses “waiting time” after asking a question: s/he leaves students enough time to think about an answer, make connections, and come up with analogies, images, and metaphors to provide a substantiated response. A constructivist teacher does not accept weak and short answers and always asks students to elaborate on their responses .
A constructivist teacher provokes students’ curiosity by asking challenging questions and using heuristics to support student learning. S/he refrains from using low level teaching strategies to support student learning such as lecturing (providing information) and demonstration (showing how to do). A constructivist teacher would rather use advanced heuristics to support student learning such as demanding explanation and justification, providing hints (e.g., organize your data into a table), criticizing and posing counterexamples, sustaining high cognitive demand questioning (e.g., why, what if), and focusing on action (e.g., how did you do it).
As any innovation, constructivism has some obvious flaws. At the current stage of its development, constructivism is more an educational philosophy than a learning technology, which causes some difficulties in the practical implementation of constructivism in the classroom. Some opponents accuse constructivism for undermining the foundations of organized teaching and learning. The main argument of opponents is fuzziness and lack of determination in teaching and learning (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1998).
Despite opponents’ arguments, constructivism gets supporters among the teaching community, which is taking concrete steps to introduce the theory into practice. There is a shift from the old theories of behaviorism toward constructivism that takes place at different educational levels (e.g., schools, colleges, and universities). Most of the teacher training curricula are revised to include the principles of constructivism. Instead of studying the works of E. Thorndike, B. Skinner and other representatives of behaviorism, pre-service teachers study the works of J. Piaget, J. Dewey, L. Vygotsky and other constructivist scholars.
(https://iite.unesco.org/pics/publications/en/files/3214730.pdf)
Perspective of Constructivism
Piaget believed that humans learn through the construction of one logical structure after another. He also concluded that the logic of children and their modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults. The implications of this theory and how he applied them have shaped the foundation for constructivist education.
Vygotsky said that we learn and develop through interactions, with language playing a key role; this type of learning is termed social Constructivism. He also emphasized the importance of providing appropriately challenging learning tasks which push a learner to “stretch” his abilities, seek assistance from others, and grow without becoming frustrated. Vygotsky called this range of challenge the Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD.
Jerome Bruner, developed what most educators today know as scaffolding theory. Bruner believed that as learners begin to build on their prior knowledge and schemata, they require the active and purposeful support of instructors to be successful. As learning continues and learners’ reliance on the instructor lessens; thus, the instructor allows more
independence (removing unnecessary help/scaffolds).
You can also watch this short video below discussing constructivism and educational technology.
While behaviorists believe that environment and experience are the only factors that influence behavior (or learning), constructivists like Jean-Jacques Piaget realized that a student’s background, perceptions, and perspective affect his learning in that they are foundations to build upon. Vygotsky argued that we learn and develop through interactions, with language playing a key role; this type of learning is termed social Constructivism. He also emphasized the importance of providing appropriately challenging learning tasks which push a learner to “stretch” his abilities, seek assistance from others, and grow without becoming frustrated. Vygotsky called this range of challenge the Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD. Click here to access more on ZPD.
Saul McLeod's summary of Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory provides a useful introduction to understanding Lev Vygotsky and his groundbreaking work with ZPD. Additionally, Vygotsky's own writing provides an excellent overview. Click here to access the summary.
The following article authored by Vygotsky focusing on "Interaction Between Learning and Development." available in Gauvain & Cole (Eds.) - Readings on the Development of Children. Click here to access the article.
Another educational psychologist working at the same time as Vygotsky, Jerome Bruner, developed what most educators today know as scaffolding theory. Bruner believed that as learners begin to build on their prior knowledge and schemata, they require the active and purposeful support of instructors to be successful. As learning continues and learners’ reliance on the instructor lessens; thus, the instructor allows more independence (removing unnecessary help/scaffolds). Click here to read more on scaffolding.
Constructionist's believe that knowledge is an active process of constructing knowledge. As yourself how that 'active process of construction' might occur. Reading a book is a passive activity. Watching videos or media is a passive activity. What does it mean to be actively engaged in the construction of knowledge? Social Constructivism is the idea that the active process is socially situated. That we learning via social interactions and collaborative activities. Read and review the following resources and as you do, think about your identified learning experiences during the first week. Did you discuss and share ideas with classmates or peer? If it was an online learning experience, were there discussions and, or collaborative projects? How did that support your construction of new ideas and knowledge?
The first reading form Berkeley gives you a brief summary of social constructivism. Click here to access the article.
In the second article, you will find a good overview of constructivism and social constructivism from the University College of Dublin. Click here to access the article.
In the final article from the University of Georgia, you will read a review the social constructivism. Click here to access the article.
After reviewing the theory a bit more, how might this impact and influence the design of learning experiences? Would you include group work? Include opportunities for discussion and debate?
If you want to continue learning about constructivism, here are supplemental readings:
Cakir, M. (2008). Constructivist approaches to learning in science and their Implications for science pedagogy: A Literature Review. International Journal of Environmental & Science Education, 3, 4. Click here to access the article.
A short article providing additional information, links, and resources about Constructivism. Click here to access the article.
Although Bruner is identified with cognitivism, his connections to Piaget and Vygotsky are strong and interesting. Click here to access the article.
Analyze strengths and limitations of Constructivism.
What are some critical perspectives?
Constructivism has been criticized on various grounds. Some of the charges that critics level against it are:
1.It's elitist. Critics say that constructivism and other "progressive" educational theories have been most successful with children from privileged backgrounds who are fortunate in having outstanding teachers, committed parents, and rich home environments. They argue that disadvantaged children, lacking such resources, benefit more from more explicit instruction.
2.Social constructivism leads to "group think." Critics say the collaborative aspects of constructivist classrooms tend to produce a "tyranny of the majority," in which a few students' voices or interpretations dominate the group's conclusions, and dissenting students are forced to conform to the emerging consensus.
3.There is little hard evidence that constructivist methods work. Critics say that constructivists, by rejecting evaluation through testing and other external criteria, have made themselves unaccountable for their students' progress. Critics also say that studies of various kinds of instruction -- in particular Project Follow Through 1, a long-term government initiative -- have found that students in constructivist classrooms lag behind those in more traditional classrooms in basic skills
Constructivists counter that in studies where children were compared on higher-order thinking skills, constructivist students seemed to outperform their peers.
What are the benefits of constructivism?
1.Children learn more, and enjoy learning more when they are actively involved, rather than passive listeners.
2.Education works best when it concentrates on thinking and understanding, rather than on rote memorization. Constructivism concentrates on learning how to think and understand.
3.Constructivist learning is transferable. In constructivist classrooms, students create organizing principles that they can take with them to other learning settings.
4.Constructivism gives students ownership of what they learn, since learning is based on students' questions and explorations, and often the students have a hand in designing the assessments as well. Constructivist assessment engages the students' initiatives and personal investments in their journals, research reports, physical models, and artistic representations. Engaging the creative instincts develops students' abilities to express knowledge through a variety of ways. The students are also more likely to retain and transfer the new knowledge to real life.
5.By grounding learning activities in an authentic, real-world context, constructivism stimulates and engages students. Students in constructivist classrooms learn to question things and to apply their natural curiosity to the world.
6.Constructivism promotes social and communication skills by creating a classroom environment that emphasizes collaboration and exchange of ideas. Students must learn how to articulate their ideas clearly as well as to collaborate on tasks effectively by sharing in group projects. Students must therefore exchange ideas and so must learn to "negotiate" with others and to evaluate their contributions in a socially acceptable manner. This is essential to success in the real world, since they will always be exposed to a variety of experiences in which they will have to cooperate and navigate among the ideas of others.
Constructivism in Classroom.
In the classroom, the constructivist view of learning can point towards a number of different teaching practices. In the most general sense, it usually means encouraging students to use active techniques (experiments, real-world problem solving) to create more knowledge and then to reflect on and talk about what they are doing and how their understanding is changing. The teacher makes sure she understands the students' preexisting conceptions, and guides the activity to address them and then build on them.
Constructivist teachers encourage students to constantly assess how the activity is helping them gain understanding. By questioning themselves and their strategies, students in the constructivist classroom ideally become "expert learners." This gives them ever-broadening tools to keep learning. With a well-planned classroom environment, the students learn HOW TO LEARN.
You might look at it as a spiral. When they continuously reflect on their experiences, students find their ideas gaining in complexity and power, and they develop increasingly strong abilities to integrate new information. One of the teacher's main roles becomes to encourage this learning and reflection process.
For example: Groups of students in a science class are discussing a problem in physics. Though the teacher knows the "answer" to the problem, she focuses on helping students restate their questions in useful ways. She prompts each student to reflect on and examine his or her current knowledge. When one of the students comes up with the relevant concept, the teacher seizes upon it, and indicates to the group that this might be a fruitful avenue for them to explore. They design and perform relevant experiments. Afterward, the students and teacher talk about what they have learned, and how their observations and experiments helped (or did not help) them to better understand the concept.