Hi All

My friend and colleague Frank Jenkins, a member of this list,
forwarded Andreas Georgiou's questions about constructivism to me
because he thought I might be interested. I was, so here I am! (But
these opinions shouldn't be seen as reflecting on Frank!)

I've considered constructivism in a number of papers, but Geelan
(1997) is probably the most relevant to these questions, as well as
the most comprehensive. Some of the points below are discussed in more
detail there.

These are really just a few comments, in no particular order, in
relation to the interesting questions Andreas raised:

1. There's not really such a thing as 'constructivism' - there are so
many different 'brands' and forms of constructivism, some with
dramatically different commitments and philosophical underpinnings,
that talking about a unitary 'constructivism' is a recipe for
confusion. The fact that many teacher education programs do this is
unfortunate, and something we should be correcting.

2. The claim that the 'real' world is either eternally unknowable or
non-existent (i.e. that reality itself is a pure mental construct) is
really on the border between epistemology and ontology - between a
statement of what we can know about the world, and a statement about
the nature of reality. Such claims (von Glasersfeld is one who makes
them most strongly) are philosophically interesting, in my opinion,
but not enormously useful in education. Their main usefulness is to
remind us about the theory-ladenness of observations: constructivism
(and lots of other recent philosophy of science) suggests that we do't
have *unmediated* access to the natural world - what we see depends to
some extent on what we're looking for, and what we already know.

3. I agree with Andreas' point that claiming constructivism is a
universal theory of education is philosophically suspect, but it's
also just educationally impractical. I hold this opinion for two reasons:
(i) The complexity of educational contexts means there are no panaceas
- we should be expanding our theoretical toolboxes and seeking
alternative descriptions, rather than committing to a single theory. I
regard constructivism, and all other educational theories, as *useful*
rather than *true* - the standards that are applied to them are those
of utility for learning. and
(ii) constructivism is actually a theory about knowledge. From that,
we can derive, in some way, theories about teaching and learning, but
that derivation includes the introduction of other theories and ideas.
I'd argue that there's no single constructivist learning theory,
simply because of these extra, often unacknowledged, steps. If
constructivism is being presented unproblematically as a learning
theory, that's a problem!

Frederick Steier (1995) has talked about the `naïve constructivism'
that involves researchers attempting to objectively study others'
construction processes, and suggests that we're all construing, all
the time.

4. It's important to make a distinction between the notions 'students
are constructing their own understandings of scientific knowledge' and
'students are constructing new scientific knowledge'. I think many
'constructivist' prescriptions for teaching err in the direction of
the latter - give students some apparatus and let them construct the
entire corpus of knowledge of hundreds of years of Western science!
That's unrealistic of course - even if only because they'd come up
with an idiosyncratic terminology and be unable to communicate with
other scientists. Constructivism is a theory about knowledge and how
it grows, and what students are constructing is their own
understanding of science. There's nothing 'constructivistically
incorrect' about comparing their developing understandings with clear
explanations of what science has found so far.

5. A conception of constructivist teaching that would not allow a
teacher to, for example, suggest that students improve their
experimental procedures or graphing techniques to allow them to
distinguish between the possibility that period of a pendulum is
directly proportional to length and the square root of length seems
like a very impoverished one. I agree that some of the more
doctrinaire proponents of constructivism overstate the peripheral
nature of teaching activity (and the New Zealand case fits that
label), but even a 'guide on the side' owes it to students to guide
their experimental interactions with the world in such a way that
valid (in the sense of fitting well with both the kinds of careful
experiences of the world we find in well conducted experiments and
with accepted scientific knowledge) explanations are constructed.
Tarring sensible, responsible constructivist theorists with
irresponsible statements made in constructism's name is unfortunate.

6. I think that, as an epistemological theory, free of ontological
trappings about the nature of reality, various of the brands of
constructivism are internally consistent and sustainable. When it
comes to deriving theories of learning and teaching, I think there
exist very interesting, plausible, fruitful ones derived from
constructivism. There also exist some that are arrant nonsense! It's
part of our activity as educators to choose and use the good, and to
eschew or challenge the bad.

Warm regards,


David Geelan

Geelan, D.R. (1997). Epistemological anarchy and the many forms of
constructivism. Science & Education, 6(1-2), 15-28.

Steier, F. (1995). From universing to conversing: An ecological
constructionist approach to learning and multiple description, in L.P.
Steffe and J. Gale (eds.), Constructivism in Education, Lawrence
Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.


PS I'm not sure what the conventions are on this list, but most lists
I've joined ask new members for a brief introduction. Here's mine -
ignore it if you're not interested.

I'm Sue's husband and Cassie and Alex's dad. I'm an Australian from
Sydney, currently enjoying life in Edmonton, Canada. I'm an assistant
professor of science education at the University of Alberta, after
being a high school chemistry and physics teacher for 7 years. I play
too many computer games, and spend lots of time working and playing on
the net, and read a couple of novels every week.