Theoretical Background

Main Theorists
John Dewey (1933/1998) is often cited as the philosophical founder of this approach. Bruner
(1990) and Piaget (1972) are considered the chief theorists among the cognitive constructivists,
while Vygotsky (1978) is the major theorist among the social constructivists.

Dewey
John Dewey rejected the notion that schools should focus on repetitive, rote memorization &
proposed a method of "directed living" – students would engage in real-world, practical
workshops in which they would demonstrate their knowledge through creativity and
collaboration. Students should be provided with opportunities to think for themselves and
articulate their thoughts.

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."

Piaget
Piaget rejected the idea that learning was the passive assimilation of given knowledge. Instead,
he proposed that learning is a dynamic process comprising successive stages of adaptation to
reality during which learners actively construct knowledge by creating and testing their own
theories of the world.

Although less contemporary & influential, it has inspired several important educational principles
such as:

Discovery learning
Sensitivity to children’s’ readiness
Acceptance of individual differences
Learners don’t have knowledge forced on them – they create it for themselves

A common misunderstanding regarding constructivism is that instructors should never tell

students anything directly but, instead, should always allow them to construct knowledge for
themselves. This is actually confusing a theory of pedagogy (teaching) with a theory of knowing.
Constructivism assumes that all knowledge is constructed from the learner’s previous
knowledge, regardless of how one is taught. Thus, even listening to a lecture involves active
attempts to construct new knowledge.

Bruner
Influenced by Vygotsky, Bruner emphasises the role of the teacher, language and instruction.
He thought that different processes were used by learners in problem solving, that these vary
from person to person and that social interaction lay at the root of good learning.
Bruner builds on the Socratic tradition of learning through dialogue, encouraging the learner to
come to enlighten themselves through reflection. Careful curriculum design is essential so that
one area builds upon the other. Learning must therefore be a process of discovery where
learners build their own knowledge, with the active dialogue of teachers, building on their
existing knowledge.

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. He
provides the following principles of constructivistic learning:

Instruction must be concerned with the experiences and contexts that make the student willing
and able to learn (readiness).
Instruction must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the student (spiral
organization).
Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and or fill in the gaps (going beyond the
information given).
Vygotsky
Social constructivism was developed by Vygotsky. He rejected the assumption made by Piaget
that it was possible to separate learning from its social context.

According to Vygotsky:

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level and,
later on, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the
child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to
the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between
individuals. (p. 57)

Although Vygotsky died at the age of 38 in 1934, most of his publications did not appear in
English until after 1960. There are, however, a growing number of applications of social
constructivism in the area of educational technology.

By the 1980s the research of Dewey and Vygotsky had blended with Piaget's work in
developmental psychology into the broad approach of constructivism. The basic tenet of
constructivism is that students learn by doing rather than observing. Students bring prior
knowledge into a learning situation in which they must critique and re-evaluate their
understanding of it.

This process of interpretation, articulation, and re-evaluation is repeated until they can
demonstrate their comprehension of the subject.