As I recently mentioned the current issue of Foundations of Chemistry is a
special issue
devoted to Chemical Education and Constructivism. It includes a very
interesting article by
Keith Taber.

Talking of different senses of 'constructivism' I attended a talk at the most
recent ACS
meeting in San Francisco in which a young woman speaker seemed to have a very
strange
notion of what the term means.

She informed the audience of how she was planning to conduct a questionnaire
with her
students and that she expected them to respond that science progresses via
scientists first
performing experiments and then arriving at theories. She then paused
significantly for
audience approval which she of course obtained given that most chemical
educators in the
US have been brainwashed into thinking that this is what distinguishes a
constructivist
from a non-constructivist.

Non constructivists and other objectionable people according to this mistaken
view,
believe in induction. They believe that objective experiments come first and
then one
arrives at theories and laws.

A constructivists according to this mistaken view is anybody who objects to a
positivist
approach to such a positivist approach to science.
But Popper objected to positivism and you certainly would not call him a
constructivist
given the criticism he poured on Kuhn one of the architects of true
constructivism,
meaning the view scientific knowledge is constructed not discovered and that
social
factors dictate theory choice rather than an independently existing world
accessible
through experiments.


And it looks to me that Keith is heading in the same sort of direction. Of
course like most
sensible educators, but not all incidentally*, he distances himself from
relativism but still
he seems to equate constructivism merely with an opposition to positivism. I
think this is
a mistake Keith.

*An example of a constructivist chemical educator who is even happy to count
himself as a
relativist is George Bodner, a much cited author in this field and in my view
also
thoroughly confused and philosophically naive.


Eric Scerri,
UCLA
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Scerri's, The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance, OUP, 2006.
(due to appear in the UK on Nov 1st)
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On Oct 13, 2006, at 12:28 PM, Dr. Keith S. Taber wrote:

At 21:50 -0700 12/10/06, Eric Scerri wrote:

Š
For example chemical education in the US is completely dominated by
constructivists.


It is always interesting to read Eric's comments on this, from his experience in
a US
context. In the UK, science education academics also tend to be almost
exclusively
constructivists. However this means something rather different here, as it
refers to
teaching science informed by our current best understanding of learning
processes. * I
strongly doubt that there are more than a handful of science teachers trained
here who
would be considered relativists. Indeed, one of our problems is trying to shift
science
education practice so that students do not develop a simplistic naive positivist
impression
that learning science is about being told out about the things that science has
proved to
be the case. In recent years, under a limited vision of the nature of science in
the
curriculum, any kind of open-ended investigative work has all but vanished to be
replaced
by straightforward 'fair-testing' in contexts where the students should know the
outcomes
in advance. ** The 14-16 curriculum has just changed - to a chorus of
reactionary
disapproval from those who feel it is a shift from solid conceptual learning to
soft
discussion. Supporters tend to see it as a move from the learning of many given
facts, to a
chance to explore the evidence behind scientific ideas. Only time will tell
which view is
closer to the mark. I obviously hope the latter.

Keith

.