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Constructivism: From Personal
Beliefs To Theoretical Principles Elizabeth Murphy As educators, our practice is informed by the beliefs and personal theories that we hold about teaching, learning and knowledge. Beliefs about how we come to know, what it means to be a teacher or how students learn constitute our own 'philosophies' which are reflected in and guide our practice. These beliefs may not be explicit in that we may never have actually articulated them. Nonetheless, if we stop to reflect on our practice, or especially if we try to explain our actions and behaviours, our beliefs surface and we become more aware of them. In becoming aware, we bring them to a more conscious level so that we can actually question, challenge, compare and communicate them or even replace them by new beliefs that we might consciously decide to embrace. Epistemological beliefs or beliefs about what constitutes knowledge and how we come to know are fundamental because they influence or provide a basis for our beliefs about learning and teaching. As Ernest (1998) argues, all practice and theories of learning and teaching rest on an epistemology, whether articulated or not. If, for example, we see knowledge as a commodity that is typically transferred or transmitted from one person to another, then our practice as teachers will likely reflect this belief. In such a case, as teachers, we may see our roles as dispensers or as transmitters of knowledge and that of students as receivers. If, on the other hand, we believe that knowledge is not transmitted but constructed through a process of sense-making, then we are more likely to see our role as that of guides or of individuals who provide support and facilitation to this construction process. Such a conception of knowledge adopts, not the metaphor of the student as passive receiver, but that of sense-maker. Often, our beliefs and tacit knowledge about teaching and learning come from explicit, expert knowledge and theories that have influenced thinking over time. The theory of behaviourism provides an example of this type of influence. During the 1950s, behaviourism began to exert an influence on educational thinking. As its name suggests, behavioural psychology limits its focus to observable behaviour and not to underlying phenomena such as understanding, reasoning and thinking (Good & Brophy,1990). Thus, it is interested in the study of changes in manifest behaviour as opposed to changes in mental states. From this perspective, learning is conceived as a process of changing or conditioning observable behaviour as result of selective reinforcement of an individual's response to events (stimuli) that occur in the environment. Behaviourism centres on students' efforts to accumulate knowledge of the natural world and on teachers' efforts to transmit it. According to Fosnot (1996), the behaviorist approach involves preplanning the curriculum by breaking down the subject area into component parts and then sequencing these parts into a hierarchy ranging from simple to more complex. The intent is to facilitate and subsequently to reinforce the learning of the component parts. Theories of knowledge may also influence our approaches to teaching and learning. Early theories emphasized knowledge as being the awareness of objects that exist independent of any subject. According to this objectivist view, objects have intrinsic meaning and knowledge is a reflection of a correspondence to reality. In this tradition, knowledge should represent a real world that is thought of as existing separate and independent of the knower and this knowledge should be considered true only if it correctly reflects that independent world. Jonassen (1991) describes how an objectivist epistemology translates into an approach to teaching and learning: Objectivists believe in the existence of reliable knowledge about the world. As learners, the goal is to gain this knowledge; as educators, to transmit it. Objectivism further assumes that learners gain the same understanding from what is transmitted (...) Learning therefore consists of assimilating that objective reality. The role of education is to help students learn about the real world. The goal of designers or teachers is to interpret events for them. Learners are told about the world and are expected to replicate its content and structure in their thinking (p.28). Like Jonassen, Hanley (1994) describes how objectivism is reflected in a "traditional model" or "objectivist model" of the classroom: Classes are usually driven by "teacher-talk" and depend heavily on textbooks for the structure of the course. There is the idea that there is a fixed world of knowledge that the student must come to know. Information is divided into parts and built into a whole concept. Teachers serve as pipelines and seek to transfer their thoughts and meanings to the passive student. There is little room for student-initiated questions, independent thought or interaction between students. The goal of the learner is to regurgitate the accepted explanation or methodology expostulated by the teacher (p.3). On an epistemological continuum, at the opposite end from objectivism would be constructivism. Constructivism argues that knowledge and reality do not have an objective or absolute value or, at the very least, that we have no way of knowing this reality. Von Glasersfeld (1995) indicates in relation to the concept of reality: "It is made up of the network of things and relationships that we rely on in our living, and on which, we believe, others rely on, too" (p.7). The knower interprets and constructs a reality based on experiences and interactions with his or her environment. Rather than thinking of truth in terms of a match to reality, von Lagerfeld focuses instead on the notion of viability: "To the constructivist, concepts, models, theories, and so on are viable if they prove adequate in the contexts in which they were created" (p.7). Although von Glasersfeld's perspective on constructivism is cited frequently in the related literature, it does not represent the dominant perspective. In fact, we can distinguish between a number of perspectives such as radical, social, physical, evolutionary and post-modern to name but some (see Steffe & Gale, 1995; Prawat, 1996; Heylighen, 1993). Ernest (1995) argues that "there are as many varieties of constructivism as there are researchers" (p.459). Von Glasersfeld, whose thinking has been profoundly influenced by the theories of Piaget, is typically associated with radical constructivism - radical "because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an objective, ontological reality but exclusively an ordering and organization of a world constituted by our experience" (von Glasersfeld, 1984, p.24). Von Glasersfeld defines radical constructivism according to the conceptions of knowledge. He sees knowledge as being actively received either through the senses or by way of communication. It is actively constructed by the cognising subject. Cognition is adaptive and allows one to organize the experiential world, not to discover an objective reality (von Glasersfeld, 1989). In contrast to von Glaserfled's position of radical constructivism, for others, social constructivism or socio-constructivism has emerged as a more palatable form of the philosophy. Heylighen (1993) explains that social constructivism "sees consensus between different subjects as the ultimate criterion to judge knowledge. 'Truth' or 'reality' will be accorded only to those constructions on which most people of a social group agree" (p.2). The role of the authority figure has two important components. The first is to introduce new ideas or cultural tools where necessary and to provide the support and guidance for students to make sense of these for themselves. The other is to listen and diagnose the ways in which the instructional activities are being interpreted to inform further action. Teaching from this perspective is also a learning process for the teacher (Driver, Aasoko, Leach, Mortimer, Scott, 1994, p. 11).
While the radical and
social perspectives of constructivism each have their particular emphases,
Ernest (1995) derives a set of theoretical underpinnings common to both: 1. Knowledge as a whole is problematized, not just the learner's subjective knowledge, including mathematical knowledge and logic. 2. Methodological approaches are required to be much more circumspect and reflexive because there is no "royal road" to truth or near truth. 3.
The focus of concern is not just the
learner's cognitions, but the learner's cognitions, beliefs, and conceptions
of knowledge. 4. The focus of concern with the teacher and in teacher education is not just with the teacher's knowledge of subject matter and diagnostic skills, but with the teacher's belief, conceptions, and personal theories about subject matter, teaching, and learning. 5. Although we can tentatively come to know the knowledge of others by interpreting their language and actions through our own conceptual constructs, the others have realities that are independent of ours. Indeed, it is the realities of others along with our own realities that we strive to understand, but we can never take any of these realities as fixed. 6. An awareness of the social construction of knowledge suggests a pedagogical emphasis on discussion, collaboration, negotiation, and shared meanings (...) (p.485).
Central to constructivism is its conception of learning. Von Glasersfeld (1995) argues that: "From the
constructivist perspective, learning is not a stimulus-response phenomenon.
It requires self-regulation and the building of conceptual structures through
reflection and abstraction" (p.14). Fosnot
(1996) adds that "Rather than behaviours or skills as the goal of
instruction, concept development and deep understanding are the foci (...)
(p.10). For educators, the challenge is to be able to build a hypothetical
model of the conceptual worlds of students since these worlds could be very
different from what is intended by the educator (von Glasersfeld,
1996). In this paradigm, learning emphasises the process and not the product. How one arrives at a particular answer, and not the retrieval of an 'objectively true solution', is what is important. Learning is a process of constructing meaningful representations, of making sense of one's experiential world. In this process, students' errors are seen in a positive light and as a means of gaining insight into how they are organising their experiential world. The notion of doing something 'right' or 'correctly' is to do something that fits with "an order one has established oneself" (von Glasersfeld, 1987, p. 15). This perspective is consistent with the constructivist tendency to privilege multiple truths, representations, perspectives and realities. The concept of multiplicity has important implications for teaching and learning. It defines, not only the epistemological and theoretical perspective but, as well, the many ways in which the theory itself can be articulated. In spite of the multiplicity of perspectives
on the theory, there are many common themes in the literature on constructivism
which permit the derivation of instructional models and general principles of
constructivist learning and teaching. Such principles can assist
teachers by providing them with a guide for the design and delivery of
learning activities. The researchers and theorists whose perspectives are
listed below suggest links between constructivist theory and practice. They
provide the beginnings of an orienting framework for a constructivist
approach to the design of teaching and 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 number of design principles: · Create real-world environments that employ the context in which learning is relevant; · Focus on realistic approaches to solving real-world problems; · The instructor should be a coach and analyser of the strategies used to solve these problems; · Stress conceptual inter-relatedness, providing multiple representations or perspectives on the content; · Instructional goals and objectives should be negotiated and not imposed; · Evaluation should serve as a self-analysis tool; · Provide tools and environments that help learners interpret the multiple perspectives of the world; ·
Learning should
be internally controlled and mediated by the learner (pp.11-12). Jonassen (1994) summarises what he refers to as the
implications of constructivism for instructional design. The following
principles illustrate how knowledge construction can be facilitated: · 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 learning environments, rather than pre-determined instructional sequences; · Foster reflective practice; · Enable context-and content dependent knowledge construction; ·
Support
collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation (p.35). ·
· 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 of thought of constructivism suggests the following
implications of constructivism which derive from both the radical and social
perspectives: · sensitivity toward and attentiveness to the learner's previous constructions; · diagnostic teaching attempting to remedy learner errors and misconceptions; · attention to metacognition and strategic self-regulation by learners; · the use of multiple representations of mathematical concepts; awareness of the importance of goals for the learner, and the dichotomy between learner and teacher goals; · awareness of the importance of social contexts, such as the difference between folk or street mathematics and school mathematics (and an attempt to exploit the former for the latter) (p.485). While these principles do not represent an
exhaustive list they do nonetheless represent those most commonly cited in
the literature. As principles, they can serve as a general guide for teaching
and learning and as specific indicators of best practices. They also present
a point of comparison against which can be measured our own beliefs about
knowledge and about teaching and learning. Such comparisons are useful
because they reassure us that our beliefs have actually been tested and
proven to be valid. In cases when our beliefs do not correspond to the
principles, we have an opportunity or reason to re-evaluate our thinking and
our behaviours. In either case, there arises an opportunity to make
more explicit the reasoning behind our behaviours either to validate them or
to call them into question so that they can be modified. In Molière's Bourgeois
Gentilhomme, the 'nouveau riche' Jourdain, who wants nothing more than to be accepted into
the company of the French Aristocracy, makes an important discovery: "I
am speaking prose! I have always spoken prose! I have spoken prose throughout
my whole life!". Jourdain's
sudden realisation highlights the notion that not all our actions are
necessarily directly guided by an overt knowledge of the reasoning behind
them. In the same way, educators often adopt a particular approach or method
without necessarily having purposely considered the theory or beliefs that
underpin the approach. Intuition, successful experiences, observations,
personal beliefs: these factors play an important role in influencing the
behaviour of teachers and, no doubt, often drive their practice. The fact that personal beliefs can relate to or reflect official theories should provide a certain reassurance to teachers that their practices are guided by valid and tested principles. No doubt there are many teachers who, although unfamiliar with constructivist theory, rely implicitly on many of its principles in order to guide their practice. Von Glasersfeld (1995) commented on how teachers oftentimes intuitively rely on official theories without being necessarily aware of their existence: "Constructivism does not claim to have made earth-shaking inventions in the area of education; it merely claims to provide a solid conceptual basis for some of the things that, until now, inspired teachers had to do without theoretical foundation" (p.15). Von Glasersfeld's musings remind us that official theories and personal beliefs exhibit a curious interplay which is oftentimes unpredictable and, sometimes, unexplainable. His comments remind us, as well, that constructivism is more than a theory of learning. It is a set of beliefs that can be translated into principles to guide our actions. Perhaps an important challenge for us as educators is to begin to question and come to a greater understanding of the philosophy, theory and epistemology that presently informs our practice. Like Molière's Jourdain, understanding what our behaviours mean can oftentimes be both revealing, and, hopefully, useful.
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