Constructivism (philosophy of education)
Piaget's focus was on how humans make meaning by integrating experiences with ideas, emphasizing human development as distinct from external influences[5] Another influential figure, Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), emphasized the importance of sociocultural learning in his theory of social constructivism, highlighting how interactions with adults, peers, and cognitive tools contribute to the formation of mental constructs.
Building upon Vygotsky's work, Jerome Bruner and other educational psychologists introduced the concept of instructional scaffolding, where the learning environment provides support that is gradually removed as learners internalize the knowledge.
Piaget described the mechanisms by which information from the environment and ideas from the individual interact to form internalized structures developed by learners.
[12]: 4 Social constructivism recognizes and embraces the individuality and complexity of each learner, actively encouraging and rewarding it as a vital component of the learning process.
[13] Social constructivism, also known as socioculturalism, emphasizes the role of an individual's background, culture, and worldview in shaping their understanding of truth.
Social constructivism also points out that young children develop their thinking abilities through interactions with peers, adults, and the physical world.
[13] Social constructivism emphasizes the importance of the student being actively involved in the learning process, unlike previous educational viewpoints where the responsibility rested with the instructor to teach and where the learner played a passive, receptive role.
[17] This theory requires support from the educational environment to fulfill three basic needs to achieve growth, including autonomy, relatedness, and competency.
[19] While a teacher gives a didactic lecture that covers the subject matter, a facilitator assists the student in developing their own understanding of the content.
[24] This dynamic interaction requires that the instructor's culture, values, and background play a significant part in shaping the learning experience.
As a result, both students and instructors need to develop an awareness of each other's viewpoints and consider their own beliefs, standards, and values, making the learning experience both subjective and objective at the same time.
[28] According to social constructivists, the act of sharing individual viewpoints, known as collaborative elaboration, leads to learners jointly constructing understanding that would not be achievable on their own.
[29][30] Social constructivist scholars view learning as an active process in which students are encouraged to discover principles, concepts, and facts independently.
[15][33] McMahon (1997) also emphasizes the social nature of learning, stating that it is not solely a mental process or a result of external factors shaping behavior.
[16] Another tenet of social constructivism is that collaboration among individuals with diverse skills and backgrounds is essential for developing a comprehensive understanding of a particular subject or field.
[[31]: 25 Holt and Willard-Holt (2000) highlight the concept of dynamic assessment, which offers a distinct approach to evaluating learners compared to traditional tests.
[24] According to this viewpoint, instructors should approach assessment as an ongoing and interactive process that evaluates the learner's achievements, the quality of the learning experience, and course materials.
[7] The world in which learners operate is not divided into separate subjects but rather comprises a complex array of facts, problems, dimensions, and perceptions.
[34] This approach entails introducing the foundational concepts that makeup topics or subject areas initially and then consistently revisiting and expanding on these ideas.
Instructors should recognize that while they are given a set curriculum to follow, they inevitably personalize it to reflect their own beliefs, thoughts, and emotions about the subject matter and their students.
According to Savery (1994), a highly structured learning environment may pose challenges for learners in constructing meaning based on their existing conceptual understandings.
[clarification needed][37][38][39][40][41] In neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development, it is proposed that learning is influenced by the processing and representational resources available at a particular age.
[45] Additionally, Mayer (2004) conducted a review of the literature and concluded that fifty years of empirical data do not support the use of pure discovery as a constructivist teaching technique.
Slezak has expressed skepticism about constructivism, describing it as "fashionable but thoroughly problematic doctrines that can have little benefit for practical pedagogy or teacher education.
The constructivist (or cognitive-developmental) stream "is based on the idea that the dialectic or interactionist process of development and learning through the student's active construction should be facilitated and promoted by adults".
[49] Ernst von Glasersfeld developed radical constructivism by coupling Piaget's theory of learning and philosophical viewpoint about the nature of knowledge with Kant's rejection of an objective reality independent of human perception or reason.
In contrast to social constructivism, it picks up the epistemological threads and maintains the radical constructivist idea that humans cannot overcome their limited conditions of reception.
"Communal constructivism" refers, specifically, to the process of experts working together to create, record, and publish new knowledge in emerging areas.
Critical constructivists argue that learners actively construct knowledge through their interactions with the world, but also recognize the power imbalances and social structures that can influence this process.
Some famous programming languages have been created, either wholly or in part, for educational use, to support the constructionist theory of Seymour Papert.
