Intelligence Organizes The World By Organizing Itself. Piaget

Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself. Piaget

Characteristics of
Constructivist Learning & Teaching
Moving from constructivist philosophy, psychology and epistemology to the
characterization of constructivist learning environments presents the challenge of
synthesizing a large spectrum of somewhat disparate concepts. An appropriate
analogy for the way in whichconstructivist concepts have evolved is that of a
prism with many facets. While the facets reflect the same light and form one part
of a whole, they nonetheless each present distinct and finely delineated
boundaries.
The presentation of characteristics in this section aims to remain true to this
analogy in that it recognizes and attempts to represent the variety of ways in
which constructivism isarticulated in the literature. Situated cognition, anchored
instruction, apprenticeship learning, problem-based learning, generative learning,
constructionism, exploratory learning: these approaches to learning are grounded
in and derived from constructivist epistemology. Each approach articulates the
way in which the concepts are operationalized for learning. The researchers and
theorists whoseperspectives are listed below suggest links between constructivist
theory and practice. They provide the beginnings of an orienting framework for a
constructivist approach to design, teaching or learning.
Jonassen (1991) notes that many educators and cognitive psychologists have
applied constructivism to the development of learning environments. From these
applications, he has isolated a numberof design principles:
1. Create real-world environments that employ the context in which learning
is relevant;
2. Focus on realistic approaches to solving real-world problems;
3. The instructor is a coach and analyzer of the strategies used to solve these
problems;
4. Stress conceptual interrelatedness, providing multiple representations or
perspectives on the content;
5. Instructionalgoals and objectives should be negotiated and not imposed;
6. Evaluation should serve as a self-analysis tool;
7. Provide tools and environments that help learners interpret the multiple
perspectives of the world;

8. Learning should be internally controlled and mediated by the learner.
(pp.11-12)
Jonassen (1994) summarizes what he refers to as "the implications of
constructivism forinstructional design". The following principles illustrate how
knowledge construction can be facilitated:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Provide multiple representations of reality;
Represent the natural complexity of the real world;
Focus on knowledge construction, not reproduction;
Present authentic tasks (contextualizing rather than abstracting instruction);
Provide real-world, case-based learningenvironments, rather than predetermined instructional sequences;
6. Foster reflective practice;
7. Enable context-and content dependent knowledge construction;
8. Support collaborative construction of knowledge through social
negotiation. (p.35)

Wilson and Cole (1991) provide a description of cognitive teaching models
which "embody" constructivist concepts. From these descriptions, we canisolate
some concepts central to constructivist design, teaching and learning:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Embed learning in a rich authentic problem-solving environment;
Provide for authentic versus academic contexts for learning;
Provide for learner control;
Use errors as a mechanism to provide feedback on learners' understanding.
(pp.59-61)

Ernest (1995) in his description of the many schools ofthought of constructivism
suggests the following implications of constructivism which derive from both the
radical and social perspectives:
1. sensitivity toward and attentiveness to the learner's previous constructions;
2. diagnostic teaching attempting to remedy learner errors and
misconceptions;
3. attention to metacognition and strategic self-regulation by learners;
4. the use of multiple...