Constructivism by Christine Mowbray

Constructivism is an educational philosophy which holds that learners ultimately construct their own knowledge that then resides within them, so that each person’s knowledge is as unique as they are. With the help of the following two websites, http://www.aln.org/alnweb/magazine/issue/sener/constrct.htm and http://www.ualberta.ca/~hkanuka/EDIT575-EDPY483/whatis.htm I have gained a better knowledge and understanding of constructivism. It appears that constructivism is a hot topic in educational philosophy and it has profound implications for current traditional instruction. We are moving away from "sage on the stage" and more toward "guide on the side". Constructivism will lead us to enabling learners to learn how to learn as well as there being more open-ended evaluation of learning outcomes.

There are three main positions on constructivism and technology. There is critical constructivism, which is the view that knowledge is constructed as a dialectical integration of internal contradictionresulting from environmental interaction. This is a spiral process in which learners continually build on what they already have learned. This is not unlike Piaget’s theory where knowledge grows and evolves and that we are always in a process of constant evolution. Then there is knowledge co-construction, which is the view that knowledge is grounded in the relationship between the knower and the known. Knowledge is not concerned with "truth validation" but the realization of more adequate versions of what truth must be. Finally there is social constructivism which is the assumption that we construct meanings actively and continuously in a social context. Basically we all have different understanding of the external world based on our individual experiences and beliefs about those experiences.

So basically constructivism is a central idea that learning is built or constructed on what we already know, there is no tabula rosa. Also prior knowledge influences what new knowledge we will construct from new learning experiences and learning is an active process rather than passive.