Cognitivism/Constructivism

Cognitivists or Constructivists believe that the learner actively constructs his or her own understandings
of reality through interaction with objects, events, and people in the environment, and reflecting on
these interactions. Early perceptual psychologists (Gestalt psychology) focused on the making of wholes
from bits and pieces of objects and events in the world, believing that meaning was the construction in
the brain of patterns from these pieces.

For learning to occur, an event, object, or experience must conflict with what the learner already knows.
Therefore, the learner's previous experiences determine what can be learned. Motivation to learn is
experiencing conflict with what one knows, which causes an imbalance, which triggers a quest to restore
the equilibrium. Piaget described intelligent behavior as adaptation. The learner organizes his or her
understanding in organized structures. At the simplest level, these are called schemes. When something
new is presented, the learner must modify these structures in order to deal with the new information.
This process, called equilibration, is the balancing between what is assimilated (the new) and
accommodation, the change in structure. The child goes through four distinct stages or levels in his or
her understandings of the world.

Some constructivists (particularly Vygotsky) emphasize the shared, social construction of knowledge,
believing that the particular social and cultural context and the interactions of novices with more expert
thinkers (usually adult) facilitate or scaffold the learning process. The teacher mediates between the new
material to be learned and the learner's level of readiness, supporting the child's growth through his or
her "zone of proximal development."

Constructivism in education has roots in epistemology. The learner has prior knowledge and
experiences, which is often determined by their social and cultural environment. Learning is
therefore done by students' “constructing” knowledge out of their experiences.

Constructivism is a philosophy of learning founded on the premise that, by reflecting on our

experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world we live in. Each of us generates
our own “rules” and “mental models,” which we use to make sense of our experiences
CONSTRUCTIVISM WHYTOTEACH WHATTOTEACH HOWTOTEACH Develop
intrinsically motivated and independent learners adequately equipped with
learnings skills for them to be able to construct knowledge and make meaning of
theme. The learners taught how to learn. They are taught learning process and
skills such as searching, critique evaluating information, etc. The teacher
provide students with data or experience that allow them to hypothesize predict,
manipulate objects, pose questions, research, investigate, image and invent

The History and Importance of

Constructivism

Plato’s Cave

Plato’s famous “allegory of the cave” can be taken as an early form of

social constructivism. Some scholars argue that this is not how Plato
intended it, but nonetheless constructivist philosophers have often taken
inspiration from the idea. Plato’s allegory goes like this:
Imagine a group of people sitting in a cave, facing the wall with their backs
to the cave entrance. When people walk around outside the cave, they
cast shadows which fall on the cave wall. The people in the cave don’t
realize there’s anything behind them; they think the shadows are reality!
The job of the philosopher is to set these people free, to turn them around
so that they can see the reality, and understand that what they saw before
was simply shadows.
On a constructivist interpretation, this allegory corresponds to the ways
that society only shows us “shadows” of the truth. Some constructivists,
however, argue that this doesn’t make sense because there is no “reality”
beneath the social constructions: to them, it’s impossible to free the
people in the cave because there is no way to escape from social
constructions. Or, at the very least, it doesn’t make sense to imagine
the philosophers being the ones who free them — after all, philosophy is
just another social construction! Social constructivists disagree about
whether there is any reality beyond the social constructions. They run the
gamut from extreme constructivists, who believe that the constructions are
the only reality, to more moderate constructivists who believe that the
constructions are powerful, but that there is still a reality behind them that
human beings can somehow access or understand even if only dimly.
Kant’s Categories

Kant is a major thinker for many constructivists, especially those who want
to hold on to some amount of realism. Kant argued that all human thought
is constrained by certain “categories,” and even though we never
completely escape these categories, we can still gain accurate, real
knowledge through them.
Example
It’s a little like a pair of tinted goggles: when you look through them, they’ll
distort your vision of the world, maybe making everything appear red. But
just because they distort the world doesn’t mean you can’t see through
them at all! You can still gain accurate knowledge of reality, for example
noticing when there is a tree or a dog in front of you. It’s just that your
knowledge is never completely accurate because the colors are distorted.
The job of philosophy, Kantians argue, is basically to try and understand
what color the goggles are, so that we can correct our vision of the world
accordingly. Kantian philosophers believe that we can understand the
categories through a process of philosophical debate, and that once we
understand what they are we will understand how our vision of the world is
distorted.
This is an example of philosophical constructivism. If you imagine that the
goggles are socially constructed, however, it would also be an example of
social constructivism. (This was not Kant’s view — he thought the goggles
were placed on the mind before birth.)

Gramsci’s Conflicts

Gramsci was an Italian revolutionary who did his philosophical work while
rotting in a jail cell in Mussolini’s fascist Italy. Drawing on the insights of
Karl Marx, Gramsci argued that social reality was constructed by and for
the owning classes. The way we understand the world, Gramsci argued, is
determined by media and education; and media and education are
controlled by people with social and political power. Therefore, the
powerful did not simply control wealth or the government — they
controlled knowledge and understanding. In a philosophical sense, they
controlled the minds of the working classes. In order to escape these social
constructions, Gramsci believed, it was necessary for the working classes
to band together and rise up against their oppressors. But this would never
be possible until the working classes were able to see what the oppressors
had been hiding.
It’s easy to imagine how Gramsci, as a victim of fascism, could take this
kind of view toward authority. His insights, however, have inspired
revolutionaries throughout the world to overthrow various kinds of social
oppression.
What is the history of constructivism, and how has it
changed over time?

In this century, Jean Piaget 1 and John Dewey 2 developed theories of childhood development and
education, what we now call Progressive Education, that led to the evolution of constructivism.

Piaget believed that humans learn through the construction of one logical structure after another. He
also concluded that the logic of children and their modes of thinking are initially entirely different from
those of adults. The implications of this theory and how he applied them have shaped the foundation
for constructivist education.

Piaget's theory of constructivism argues that people produce knowledge and form meaning
based upon their experiences. Piaget's theory covered learning theories, teaching methods,
and education reform. ... Accommodation, on the other hand, is reframing the world and new
experiences into the mental capacity already present.

Dewey called for education to be grounded in real experience. He wrote, "If you have doubts about
how learning happens, engage in sustained inquiry: study, ponder, consider alternative possibilities
and arrive at your belief grounded in evidence." Inquiry is a key part of constructivist learning.

Among the educators, philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists who have added new perspectives
to constructivist learning theory and practice are Lev Vygotsky 3, Jerome Bruner 4, and David
Ausubel 5.

Vygotsky introduced the social aspect of learning into constructivism. He defined the "zone of proximal
learning," according to which students solve problems beyond their actual developmental level (but
within their level of potential development) under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable
peers.

Bruner initiated curriculum change based on the notion that learning is an active, social process in
which students construct new ideas or concepts based on their current knowledge.

Piaget
Piaget is widely recognized as the founding father of Constructivism with his notion
that learning is individually constructed however others such as Vygotsky have playe a
key role in making this student-centred and active learning theory influencial today.