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A Brief Review of Constructivism OVERVIEW

According to Roffe (2005), an early concept of constructivism, also conceptualized by Deleuze, was that philosophers are creators, and that each reading of philosophy, or each philosophical encounter, ought to inspire new concepts. Constructivism epistemology has evolved from Deleuzes early concept with what Matthews (2008) describes as the Philosophy of Childhood. Matthews defines this as taking up philosophically interesting questions about childhoodas well as theories of cognitive and moral development. Constructivism is described by Johanssen (1992) as a paradigm shift of thinking and learning theories and contrasts with more traditional and popular objectivist theories of behaviorism. The key difference, according to Johanssen (1992) is the assumption that reality is a construct of the mind. He argues that one must look at all views of learning theory to arrive at their own view about reality, learning, and instruction. A more simplistic definition is provided later by Johansen which states that peoples reality is more a construct of the mind of the knower and that this is constructed based on their interpretation. It is concerned primarily with the function of the prior experiences, mental structures, and beliefs that one uses to interpret objects and events. This is set apart from behavioristic behaviorist theories (or objectivists) in that a persons mind is unobservable. A definition of constructivism is offered by Davidson-Shivers & Rasmussen (2006) as constructivism derives from the idea that learners construct meaning based on their own experiences through a social negotiation of that meaning during learning. Learning is an active process where learners should be involved in their own goal setting.

CONTRIBUTORS
One of the major contributors to constructivism, especially in child psychology, was Jean Piaget. Piaget introduced the idea that knowledge was a product of both assimilated and accommodated experiences or as McGuire (1966) writes, a mental adaptation to new circumstances. Constructivism is based on the notion that learning and knowledge that a person or child possess is based on that individuals experiences and prior knowledge, or as McGuire (1966) states, a perception, sensory motor learning insight and judgment all amount, in one way or another, to a structuring of this relationship between the environment and the organism. Piaget made great strides in the differences between how children learn and how adults learn. Davidson-Shivers & Rasmussen (2006) describe Vygotskys beliefs in mental processes as being an internal mechanism used independently from those around them.

MAJOR PRINCIPLES
McGuire (1966) states that Piaget has hypothesized four distinct, but chronologically successive models of intelligence. These include sensory motor, preoperational, concretely operational, and formal operational. Piaget asserted that children and adults intelligences are qualitatively different resulting in an understanding in children much different from the child and are seen as imperfect understandings that will progressively succeed into more adult like representations as children move through the successive stages chronologically, such as gaining sensorimotor skills necessary to develop an internal representation of the world, and thus progress to the preoperational stage. During this stage, things are just the way they are, until they are concretely operational where the child relies less on perception. As this progresses, the concretely operational child can deal to a degree with potentiality as well as actuality to which the preoperational child is limited, or in other words, reaches the highest level of intelligence.

APPLICATION

2 Davidson-Shivers & Rasmussen (2006) assert that the application of constructivism has been approaching the classroom since the 1990s. Johanssen (1992) discusses situated cognition or learning taking place in the same context as where learning would make most sense, and cognitive apprenticeship, where the instructional environment is more realistic to the learning content; however, these are described as being cognitive strategies based on constructivist thought as opposed to models of instruction. Johanssen (1992) also describes a conceptual model of contructivist learning theory in a classroom in discovery learning where learners construct their own knowledge based on teacher guided inquiries.

References
Davidson-Shivers, G. V., & Rasmussen, K. L. (2006). Web-Based Learning: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation. UpperSaddle River, New Jersey, United States: Pearson. Johanssen, D. (1992). Objectivism versus Constructivism: Do We Need a New Paradigm Shift? ETR&D, 39(3), pp 5-14. Matthews, G. (2008, Fall). The Philosophy of Childhood. (E. N. Zalta, Ed.) Retrieved September 20, 2010, from The Stanford Encclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/childhood/ McGuire, C. R. (1966). An Introduction to Jean Piaget. ERIC, EBSCO host. Roffe, J. (2005, July 12). Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (P. James Fieser, & B. Dowden, Ph.D., Eds.)