Upshot: Responding to and further developing the points raised by the open peer commentaries, I discuss a range of themes, including possible roles of lecture-based teaching in a radical constructivist approach to education, approaches to the teaching of large cohorts in a radical constructivist manner, the role of assessment in students’ learning experiences, the distinction of “models of” student learning, contrasted with “models for” student learning, the distinction of literal conversation from an atmosphere conducive to conversation, and the use of design-based tasks to support and encourage students’ individual conceptual constructing.

Open peer commentary on the article “Subsystem Formation Driven by Double Contingency” by Bernd Porr & Paolo Di Prodi. Upshot: By analyzing Porr and Di Prodi’s model for addressing the double contingency problem, I try to take a step further by questioning the importance and implications of the loop concept in the constructivist approach.

This study aims to state primary school teachers’ beliefs towards constructivist learning practices. The study group of this research is consisted of 220 primary school teachers. “The Specification Scale of Teachers’ Beliefs towards Constructivist Learning Practices” is used for data collection in this study. The results of the research suggest that the teachers have positive beliefs towards constructivist learning practices. Teachers’ beliefs do not show significant difference in terms of the type of graduate school and professional seniority. In addition, teachers’ gender does not make any difference except activity dimesion on the other hand the location of the school where they are work has led to significant difference just for practice dimension.

Key words: constructivist approach, constructivist curriculum, constructivist learning practices, teachers views.

This paper explores and challenges a numberof the assumptions and claims commonly associated with a constructivist approach to school scienceeducation, e.g., that constructivist ideas aboutlearning require a progressive pedagogy or that`active learning’ demands engaging students withpractical activities. It suggests that constructivistideas have a particular appeal within primaryeducation because they help to justify classroompractices and activities that primary school teachers,for a variety of other reasons, regard as important. It is suggested that the recent dominant emphasis uponconstructivism in science education has narrowed boththe professional and the research agenda relating toschool science teaching. The paper argues for greaterclarity and precision when referring to constructivistideas in science education and for a betterunderstanding of the role that learning theoriesshould play in influencing the ways in which scienceis taught in schools.

Context: Over a thirteen-year period Ernst von Glasersfeld directly answered a wide diversity of questions posed to him on the Oikos web site. Purpose: This is the fourth and final article in a series that is based on a selection from all of the questions posed in the thirteen-year period and is aimed at giving prominence to key aspects of his radical constructivist approach. Method: This article deals with the issue of “change,” divided into the two main themes of (i) viability as defined by von Glasersfeld and (ii. the processes of personal learning and change. Implications: This ultimate article of this series offers an important source of original material for those readers who are seeking to elaborate their understanding of radical constructivism.

Key words: Viability, experiential realities, Darwinian concept of fitness, functional fit, Piaget, William Powers, intersubjectivity, linguistic communication.

A constructivist approach to cognition assumes the minimal and the simplest set of initial principles or mechanisms, embeds them in realistic circumstances, and lets the entire system evolve under close observation. This paper presents a line of research along this approach trying to connect embodiment to social cognition. First, we show that a mere physical body, when driven toward some task goal, provides a clear information structure, for action execution and perception. As a mechanism of autonomous exploration of such structure, “embodiment as a coupled chaotic field” is proposed, with experiments showing emergent and adaptive behavior. Scaling up the principles, a simulation of the fetal/neonatal motor development is presented. The musculo-skeletal system, basic nervous system, and the uterus environment are simulated. The neural-body dynamics exhibit spontaneous exploration of a variety of motor patterns. Lastly, a robotic experiment is presented to show that visual-motor self-learning can lead to neonatal imitation.

Key words: embodiment, actions, symbols, information structure, emergent behavior, learning, imitation, fetus, cortical maps, body schema/image, coupled chaos system

Open peer commentary on the article “Ethics: A Radical-constructivist Approach” by Andreas Quale. Upshot: This comment deals primarily with Quale’s attempt to distinguish between cognitive knowledge and non-cognitive knowledge. Considering that he uses this distinction as a basis for discussing ethical issues, I thought it important to assess the validity of this position and its potential usefulness for radical constructivism. In the following section, I sketch out my understanding of von Glasersfeld’s conception of cognition; so doing, I set the stage for throwing into question, in the second section, a suspension that Quale proposes regarding both cognition and communication.

This exploratory paper questions whether resilience engineering is a realist or constructivist approach of safety. After a presentation of two positions: critical realism and radical constructivism, the authors explain how the frameworks provided by thèse two positions were used in différent researches, answering différent questions that arose during the work. For one, critical realism offered an answer to the problem of the relationship between agency and structure. For the other, radical constructivism afforded a good définition of what models can be thought as. Both developments show the relevance of taking into account of philosophical antécédents for applied research and how this is valuable for resilience engineering and the directions that could be pursued for future development.

Open peer commentary on the article “Ethics: A Radical-constructivist Approach” by Andreas Quale. Upshot: While Quale’s radical constructivist intervention into ethics is novel and insightful, I advance four counterpoints that underscore the social as opposed to personal nature of ethics. I argue that (1) the social nature of being always integrates individual knowers into a moral order; (2) that cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge are mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive; (3) that non-cognitive knowledge can be communicated just as cognitive knowledge can be; (4) and that ethical standards develop from and ossify as cognitive knowledge all the time. I argue that because ethics are rooted in language, symbols and culture, they are capable of being debated and agreed upon just as cognitive understandings are.

Open peer commentary on the article “Ethics: A Radical-constructivist Approach” by Andreas Quale. Upshot: Radical constructivism views ethics as an individual responsibility. What are the limits of that responsibility? I pose some questions but do not accept the responsibility to answer them. Radical constructivism may be neutral but it need not be indifferent. An ethically neutral constructivism need not construct an ethically neutral constructivist.