Constructivism in science education has been the subject of considerable debate in the science education literature. The purpose of this study was to facilitate chemistry teachers’ understanding that the tentative nature of scientific knowledge leads to the coexistence and rivalries among different forms of constructivism in science education. The study is based on 17 in-service teachers who had registered for a 11-week course on ‘Epistemology of Science Teaching’ as part of their Master’s degree program. The course is based on 17 readings drawing on nature of science and a critical evaluation of constructivism. Course activities included written reports, classroom discussions based on participants’ presentations and written exams. Based on the results obtained, it is plausible to suggest that participant teachers experienced the following transitions leading to greater understanding, as they acquired experience with respect to constructivism: (a) Active participation of students as a pre-requisite for change; (b) Different forms of constructivism represent competing and conflicting interpretations of progress in science; (c) Acceptance of the present state of constructivism as a Kuhnian paradigm; (d) Social constructivism as the preferred form of constructivism; (e) Critical appraisal of social constructivism; (f) Despite its popularity, social constructivism does not constitute a Kuhnian paradigm (due to controversies, there is no consensus in the science education community); (g) Contradictions faced by constructivism in science education provide the base for its advance and evolution towards more progressive forms, and hence the need to consider, whither constructivism?

Key words: Constructivism, Science education, Nature of science, Tentative nature of scientific knowledge.

Excerpt: In the educational technology literature the term instructional design has so many meanings that its use has little purpose without further elaboration. In some publications, the term roughly refers to the field called educational technology in this article (e.g., Reigeluth, 1983). In others, the term is used to describe the practice of educational technology from a particular theoretical perspective such as behaviorism (Gropper, 1987). Instructional design may also be the umbrella term indicating the components that should be included in an instructional package (Merrill, 1988). The phrase has also been used to indicates the process of designing instruction (McAlpine, 1992), and still others have used it to mean a particular model or theory that can guide the design of instruction (Wright & Conroy, 1988). In this article, instructional design (ID) refers to the process of designing instructional materials, and the term instructional design model (ID model) refers to a model or theory that can guide the instructional design process.

In recent years a new movement in the philosophy of education has arisen. It flies the banner of “constructivism, ” taking its name, Ernst von Glasersfeld tells us, from comments of the eighteenth century Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico. Vico was an admirer of the work of René Descartes, the seventeenth century philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, who offered rational explanations of a wide range of natural phenomena, for which he is famous to this day. Unfortunately, Descartes’ writings had been banned by the Church, suffering the same fate as those of Copernicus and Galileo. And that region of the Italian peninsula was then ruled by a Spanish viceroy, who, like the king he served, had little tolerance for ideas that might be seen as challenging religious authorities. For this reason, Vico faced a difficult problem in publishing his philosophy of history, which sought rational and historical explanations of the origin of human cultures from early primitive beginnings to the complexities of European states of that day. Such explanations might seem to conflict with the conventional wisdom that human societies were the work of Divine providence, being properly ruled by kings responsible only to God. His solution was to tell us that, as God had created the world, only He could truly know it. The best that mere humans could do was to construct their own ideas about it, without pretending that these could ever reach the stature of His knowledge. By putting matters in this way, Vico was successful in getting the publication of his work permitted by the Church, and his philosophy of history stands today as a historical landmark on its own.

In this chapter, I focus on one of the aspects of constructivist theory that Glasersfeld (Ch. 1) identifies as in need of further development. This aspect of the theory involves locating students’ mathematical development in social and cultural context while simultaneously treating learning as a process of adaptive reorganization. In addressing this issue, I illustrate the approach that I and my colleagues currently take when accounting for the process of students’ mathematical learning as it occurs in the social context of the classroom. In the opening section of the chapter, I clarify why this is a significant issue for us as mathematics educators. I then outline my general theoretical orientation by discussing Glasersfeld’s constructivism and Bauersfeld’s interactionism. Against this background, I develop criteria for classroom analyses that are relevant to our interests as researchers who develop learning environments for students in collaboration with teachers. Next, I illustrate the interpretive framework that I and my colleagues currently use by presenting a sample classroom analysis. Finally, in the concluding sections of the chapter, I reflect on the sample analysis to address four more general issues. These concern the contributions of analyses of the type outlined in the illustrative example, the relationship between instructional design and classroom-based research, the role of symbols and other tools in mathematical learning, and the relation between individual students’ mathematical activity and communal classroom processes.

Excerpt: I feel that this ‘Ernst von Glasersfeld Celebration’ was the proper anacrusis, the proper Auftakt, the proper prelude for a style of thinking that will initiate, and then dominate, the third millennium. Isn’t that an overstatement? I say: ‘No!’ Now, in which way can I justify this contention? I shall try to do this in three ways: I shall talk about disappearance, about essence, and about emergence.

An understanding of Piaget’s theoretical position on the knowing process is necessary in order to appreciate fully the impact of his research. His theory of knowledge has many significant points in common with that of the German philosopher Kant. This article sketches the epistemologies of the 17th and 18th century movements of rationalism, empiricism, and romanticism which preceded Kant, Kant’s revolutionary conclusions concerning reality and the knowing process, and some parallels and areas of divergence between the Kantian and Piagetian theories of knowledge

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of soft science measurement of motivation under strict hard science criteria from observations of individual animals and to suggest the conditions under which an observation can be classified as a measurement. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology starts from reconciling second-order cybernetics/ radical constructivism (SOC/RC) understanding of the central role of the observer with physical measurements, which accepts the existence of a mind-independent reality. As a result of the reconciliation, parallels were identified between the SOC/RC experiences of as_is and as_if, on the one hand, and the measurement concepts of accuracy and resolution, on the other hand. The scales of physical measurement are defined by criteria of varying strictness, and the scales that meet the strict criterion of concatenation are generally considered hard science and lead to well-defined accuracy and precision. The similarity between SOC/RC and physical measurement suggests that if accuracy and precision can be computed from observations, then the observations can be classified as measurements in a strict hard science fashion; otherwise, the observations are just observations. Findings: A nonlinear dynamic model of motivation is reintroduced as an example for reference in measurements of motivation. If there was an agreement on its use among observers (Ethologists), which in reality is not the case, then empirical data may be collected, and the averages and spreads of parameter estimations will define a reference for an animal species. Later, observers with their own data will calibrate with the reference model, so that new observers will have calculated values of accuracy and precision for their data. Research limitations/implications – Unlike hard science whose scales of measurement are practically unambiguous, measuring the purpose of behaviour of an animal has inherent ambiguity according to the reintroduced model. The ambiguity cannot be resolved from instantaneous readings. The necessary existence of ambiguity renders the criticism of hard science invalid, that of expecting to measure motivation with a static scale as if it were temperature. Practical implications: Human observers can be treated as measuring devices of motivation from observing behaviour. Each observer can have characteristic accuracy/precision, or validity/reliability, calculated from empirical data. Social implications – This is an inductive, rather than deductive, study of individual animal behaviour; the author believes it is extensible to individual human behaviour and personality studies. However, group behaviour studies are beyond its scope. Originality/value – The author believes that the suggestion of ambiguity of scales of animal motivation is original, and the suggested link between SOC/RC and a mainstream hard science is new.

Key words: cybernetics, second-order cybernetics, modelling, nonlinear systems, measurement

What evolutionary account explains our capacity to reason mathematically? Identifying the biological provenance of mathematical thinking would bear on education, because we could then design learning environments that simulate ecologically authentic conditions for leveraging this universal phylogenetic inclination. The ancient mechanism coopted for mathematical activity, I propose, is our fundamental organismic capacity to improve our sensorimotor engagement with the environment by detecting, generating, and maintaining goal-oriented perceptual structures regulating action, whether actual or imaginary. As such, the phenomenology of grasping a mathematical notion is literally that – gripping the environment in a new way that promotes interaction. To argue for the plausibility of my thesis, I first survey embodiment literature to implicate cognition as constituted in perceptuomotor engagement. Then, I summarize findings from a design-based research project investigating relations between learning to move in new ways and learning to reason mathematically about these conceptual choreographies. As such, the project proposes educational implications of enactivist evolutionary biology.

Key words: constructivism, design, education, enactivism, mathematics

Excerpt: The basic structure recognitory of the object-as-expected is the organism, whose disparate acts become organized into modality-specific recognitory systems as it differentiates adapting to the environment, and that internal differentiation of sub-systems and their coordination with one another are complementary aspects of construction of objectivity. Differentiation is made possible by the dual dialectical process inherent in the organism’s interaction with its environment, first, between its intentional and unintentional interactions in the state of need and quiescence, respectively, and second, between the undifferentiated confirmatory and differentiated disconfirmatory interactions within the intentional state. The present chapter integrates these conclusions into a detailed account of development during the first months of life.

The concept of self is explored from the perspective of systems theory, particularly 2nd-order cybernetics. The author believes that the self, like the family, is a legitimate autonomous system (i.e., a unity with organization and structure that functions in a manner that is always self-referential). The concepts of organizational closure and structural coupling, as developed by H. Maturana and F. Varela (1980), are employed to describe how the self and the family represent nonintersecting systems that have mutual influence.