|
Building an Understanding of Constructivism
Written activities and exercises alone do not go to the heart of
constructivism, but books have laid the groundwork for this approach to
learning. The basic writings in this field are sometimes interesting and
often illuminating, even though they cannot "give" anyone constructivism.
Teachers, however, can use these works to build their own understanding of
constructivism and its place in the classroom. Here are some
representative selections of constructivist thinking and of useful guides
to constructivist ideas.
As a philosophy of learning, constructivism can be traced at least to
the eighteenth century and the work of the Neapolitan philosopher
Giambattista Vico, who held that humans can only clearly understand what
they have themselves constructed. Many others worked with these ideas, but
the first major contemporaries to develop a clear idea of constructivism
as applied to classrooms and childhood development were Jean Piaget and
John Dewey.
For Dewey education depended on action. Knowledge and ideas emerged
only from a situation in which learners had to draw them out of
experiences that had meaning and importance to them (see Democracy and
Education, 1916). These situations had to occur in a social context,
such as a classroom, where students joined in manipulating materials and,
thus, created a community of learners who built their knowledge together.
Piaget's constructivism is based on his view of the psychological
development of children. In a short summation of his educational thoughts
(To Understand is to Invent, 1973), Piaget called for teachers to
understand the steps in the development of the child's mind. The
fundamental basis of learning, he believed, was discovery: "To understand
is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery, and such conditions must be
complied with if in the future individuals are to be formed who are
capable of production and creativity and not simply repetition." To reach
an understanding of basic phenomena, according to Piaget, children have to
go through stages in which they accept ideas they may later see as not
truthful. In autonomous activity, children must discover relationships and
ideas in classroom situations that involve activities of interest to them.
Understanding is built up step by step through active involvement.
The Russian Lev. S Vygotsky is also important to constructivism,
although his ideas have not always been clear to the English-reading
public both because of political constraints and because of
mistranslations. Some commentators believe that Vygotsky is not a
constructivist because of his emphasis on the social context in learning,
but others see his stress on children creating their own concepts as
constructivist to the core. Mind in the Society (English
translation, 1978) is a popularization of some of his ideas for an
American audience; also available is a collection of shorter works, The
Vygotsky Reader (ed. Rene van der Veer and Jaan Valsiner, 1994).
Vygotsky believed that children learn scientific concepts out of a
"tension" between their everyday notions and adult concepts. Presented
with a preformed concept from the adult world, the child will only
memorize what the adult says about the idea. To make it her property the
child must use the concept and link that use to the idea as a first
presented to her. But the relation between everyday notions and scientific
concepts was not a straight development to Vygotsky. Instead the prior
conceptions and the introduced scientific concepts are interwoven and
influence each other as the child works out her own ideas from the
generalizations that she had already and that have been introduced to
her.
ReferencesDewey, John. Democracy and
Education. New York: Free Press, 1966.
Piaget, Jean. To Understand is to Invent. New York: Grossman,
1973.
Vygotsky, Lev S. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher
Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1978.
The Vygotsky Reader. Rene van der Veer and Jaan Valsiner, eds.
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994.
Since the groundwork of constructivism was laid several authors have
added to it. The following recent works (of varying levels of abstraction)
provide further insights into constructivism and its relation to classroom
learning. Most of these works have bibliographies that will be useful to
those who wish to read more about these ideas:
Brooks, Jacqueline Grennon, and Martin G. Brooks. In Search of
Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms. Alexandria, VA:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1993.
Duckworth, Eleanor, Jack Easley, David Hawkins, and Androula Henriques.
Science Education: A Minds-on Approach for the Elementary Years.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1990.
Tobin, Kenneth, ed. The Practice of Constructivism in Science
Education. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of
Science, 1993.
Classroom
Compass Back Issues: Issue 1.3
Contents: Previous
: Next
|
