Constructivism
A set of assumption about the nature of human learning that guides constructivist learning theories and teaching methods of education. Constructivism values developmentally appropriate teacher-supported learning that is initiated and directed by the students. In past centuries, constructivist ideas were not widely valued due to the perception that children’s play was seen as aimless and of little importance. Jean Piaget did not agree with these traditional views. He saw play as an important and necessary part of the student’s cognitive development and has provided scientific evidence for his views.
The background and development of constructivism
The constructivist movement has grown essentially from dissatisfaction with educational methods where rote memorization, regulation of facts and the division of knowledge into different subjects, led to a situation where learners were not necessarily able to apply what they have learned in real life. As early as 1929, Alfred North Whitehead argued that the way students learn many tings in school produces inert knowledge, that can be used to answer items on a school test but which is not available to the student when he or she is trying to solve a problem that requires that knowledge.
In traditional rationalist and behaviorist approaches, instruction is focused on covering an extensive subject area, reducing the amount of time for problem-solving and thinking beyond the facts, thus minimizing independent and autonomous leaning. It also encourages didactic lecture formats rather than active student learning. This fundamental problem led to the view point that instructors should only provide appropriate leaning situations that will allow students to develop their own knowledge, meaning and truth that will be useful in later life.
Providing a problem-solving context for actively engaging students in the thoughtful application of knowledge is an important variable in increasing learning. This educational viewpoint is called cognitive constructivism and was derived form the work of Piaget. It defines learning as an internal process of accommodation, assimilation and balance. Piaget saw learning as a process where an individual constructs his or her own meaning through cognitive processes. The main underlying assumption of constructivism is that individuals are actively involved right from birth in constructing personal meaning that is their own personal understanding from their experiences.
This is more concerned with the process of learning than with what is learned. Constructivism goes beyond the study of how the brain stores and retrieves information to examine the ways in which learners make meaning from experience. Rather the transmission of knowledge, learning is an internal process of interpretation; learners do not transfer knowledge from the external world into their memories, rather, they create interpretations of the world based upon their experiences and their interactions in the world. How someone constructs the world, his or her existing metaphors, is at least as powerful a factor influencing what is learned as any characteristic of that world. Most cognitive theories and the constructivist approaches that have grown out of these argue that learning should be durable, transferable and self-regulated. Mechanism need to be in place to promote the deeper internal processing required for such learning to occur.
Constructivists Theory
Formalization of the theory of constructivism is generally attributed to Jean Piaget, who articulated mechanisms by which knowledge is internalized by learners. He suggested that through processes of accommodation and assimilation, individuals construct new knowledge from their experiences. Assimilation occurs when individuals’ experiences are associated with their internal representation of the world. They assimilate the new experiences into an already existing framework.
Accommodation is the process of reframing one’s mental representation of the external world to fit new experiences. It was understood as the mechanism by which failure leads to learning. By accommodating this new experience and reframing our model of the way the world works, we learn from the experiences of failure. It is important to note that constructivism itself does not suggest one particular pedagogy.
Constructivism describes how learning should happen. The theory of constructivism suggests that learners construct knowledge, as a description of human cognition is often associated with pedagogic approaches that promote learning by doing. The learners learn knowledge if they think it is applicable to life and so they give interpretation according to what they have understood.
Constructivist learning intervention
The learners learn as a unique individual. Social constructivism views each learner as a unique individual with unique needs and background. The learners are also seen as complex and multidimensional. Social constructivism not only acknowledges the uniqueness and complexity of the learner, but actually encourages, utilizes and rewards it as an integral part of the leaning process. The learners interpret the things according to their own knowledge and experiences. Various students have various knowledge to understand and construct the new meaning. The same meaning can interpreted in different way by different people. Every body perceives things differently; they are from different background so reality depends on person’s understanding.
The importance of the background and culture of the learner
Social constructivism encourages the learner to arrive at his or her own version of the truth, influences by his or her background, culture or embedded worldview. These symbols systems dictate how the learner learns and what is learned. It gives importance of the nature of the learner’s social interaction with knowledge members of the society. Without the social interaction with other more knowledgeable people, it is impossible to acquire social meaning of important symbol systems and learn how to utilize.
The responsibility of learning
Young children develop their thinking abilities by interacting with adults. Background knowledge plays an important role in learning process. Background and culture of the learners is important through the learning process, as background helps to shape the knowledge and truth that the learner creates, discovers and attains in the learning process. Social constructivism thus emphasizes the importance of the learner being actively involved in the learning process, unlike previous educational viewpoints where the responsibility rested with the instructor to teach and where the learners played a passive, receptive role.
Von Glasersfeld (1989) emphasizes that learners construct their own understanding and that they do not simply mirror and reflect what they read. Learners look for meaning and will try to find regularity and order in the events of the world even in the absence of full or complete information.
The motivation for learning
Another crucial assumption regarding the nature of the learner concerns the level and source of motivation for learning. According to Von Glasersfeld sustaining motivation to learn is strongly dependent on the leaner’s confidence in his or her potential for learning. These feelings of competence and belief and belief in potential to solve new problems are derived from first-hand experience of mastery of problems in the past and are much more powerful than any external acknowledgement and motivation. By experiencing the successful completion of challenging tasks, learners gain confidence and motivation to embark that are more complex on challenges.
The role of the instructor
The role of the instructors is as facilitators in constructivism. Instructors have to adapt the role of facilitators and not the teachers. Facilitators always remain at the back of the learners in the class and encourage them to reach at certain conclusion as well as creates environment.
Difference between facilitator and teacher
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The nature of learning process
Learning is an active and social process where learners should learn to discover principles, concepts and facts for themselves. Reality is not something that we can discover because it does not pre-exist prior to our social invention of it. Reality is constructed by our own activities and that people, together as members of a society, invent the properties of the world. Individuals make meanings through interactions with each other and with the environment they live in.
Knowledge is a product of humans and is socially and culturally constructed. Learning is a social process. It is not a process that only takes place inside our minds, nor is it a passive development of our behaviours that is shaped by external forces and that meaningful learning occurs when individuals are engaged in social activities. Through practical activity a child constructs meaning on an intrapersonal level i.e. making meaning himself, while speech connects this meaning with the interpersonal world shared by the child and her or his culture.
The dynamic interaction between Task, instructor and learner
The instructor and the learners are equally involved in learning from each other. The learning experience is both subjective and objective and requires that the instructor’s culture, values and background become an essential part of the interplay between learners and tasks in the shaping of meaning. Learners compare their version of the truth with that of the instructor and follow learners in order to get to a new, socially tested version of truth.
The task or problem is thus the interface between the instructor and the learner. This creates a dynamic interaction between task, instructor and learner. The learners and instructors develop an awareness of each other’s viewpoints and look to own beliefs, standards and values that becomes subjective and objective both at the same time.
Collaboration between learners
Learning is collaborative Therefore, the learners with different skills and backgrounds should collaborate in tasks and discussions in order to arrive at a shared understanding of the truth in a specific field. Learners learn many things from their friends as they share their experiences and understandings. It defined as the distance between the actual developmental levels as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined though problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers, it differs from the fixed biological nature of Piaget’s stages of development
The importance of context
Through a process of ‘scaffolding’, a learner can be extended beyond the limitations of physical maturation to the extent that the development process lags behind the learning process. Vygotsky, the social constructivist paradigm views the context in which the learning occurs a central to the learning itself. Underlying the notion of the learners as an active processor is “the assumption that there is no one set of generalized learning laws with each law applying to all domains”.
De contextualized knowledge does not give us the skills to apply our understandings to authentic tasks because, we are not working with the concept in the complex environment and experiencing the complex interrelationships in that environment that determines how and when the concept is used. One social constructivist notion is that of authentic or situated learning, where the student takes part in activities, which are directly relevant to the application of learning, and which take place within a culture similar to the applied setting.
Conclusion
Constructivism theory believes that appropriate environment should be created and given for the learners so that they can create lots of ideas themselves. The learners will get knowledge and construct meanings according to their inner aptitude and knowledge that they have. Therefore, as teacher, we should let the learners to construct the meaning themselves using their own knowledge and the learners try to assimilate with the new things and make the meaning. They try to understand and make interpretation of text in their own way and understand the intention of the speaker and impression of the hearer of the text. The learners can interpret and explain text in any way they like as they understand and can interpret text in different ways as everything can be falsified. Truth can be in the eyes of interprets so the all the time the truth can remain as it is. Therefore, I am very much impressed by this theory. As we know that knowledge is not transferable but it is self-regulated and durable which cannot be divided among the people. It is self-construct. The knowledge which is within our mind, try to compare with knew knowledge or experience and try to understand self in vary. Hence, learners will interpret text in their own way using their understanding, the interpretation of the students should be accepted. So multiple heads must be accepted not only the teacher’s interpretation is correct. Because of their personal experience, background and unique individual they understand the text or things differently and give their own interpretation. Therefore, the learners should be given an opportunity to create their own meaning.
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