In the field of education we usually find a wide range of differing proposals and approaches under the label of “constructivism.” The author’s thesis is that these differences have two origins. Firstly, the psychological theories these proposals and approaches are based on; and secondly, the particular use of the psychological theories in order to study, understand and explain the teaching learning processes at school. Three common ways or approaching the relationships between psychological knowledge and educational theory and practice are reviewed. All three deserve to be qualified as constructivist and have demonstrated their power in producing extremely useful and valuable implications and applications for schooling. However, two of them only offer a list of explanatory concepts and principles extracted from the developmental and learning theories used. The third, in addition, aims to provide a genuine constructivist explanation of teaching and learning processes at school, through the inclusion of the aforesaid principles and concepts in a whole logical scheme and through their reinterpretation on the basis of nature, functions and characteristics of schooling.

Key words: constructivism, constructivist approaches in education, constructivist theories of development, constructivist theories of learning, constructivist approach to teaching and learning processes

Excerpt: We are not much concerned with who has it right and who has it wrong, nor with the sorts of contortions necessary to embrace two or more variations. Rather, we find it much more instructive to read across versions and interpretations and to highlight common elements as well as points of disjuncture. This is our project in the first section of this essay, and we use it to explore a possible shared intuition, one that actually points to the impossibility of bringing together different theoretical offerings. This examination is followed by a discussion of the manners in which constructivist vocabularies have been assimilated into the discourses of professional practice, curriculum development, and related projects. The main intention here is not to critique but to develop the assertion that, at the level of practical action, most constructivist discourses were not originally conceived as educational discourses. Oriented by this point, in the third section of the essay we speculate on the sorts of revisions and accommodations that might help to frame relevant constructivist insights in terms that are useful and appropriate to discussions of teaching and schooling. We look to several cross-disciplinary discourses in this section, both as means to read across different versions of constructivism and as sources of advice on a new vocabulary.

This programme is the result of the response of the Association of Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE, 1987) to a 1985 Resolution by the EC Council of Ministers for Education that an action programme be implemented in EC countries to ensure equal opportunities in education for boys and girls. An essential part of the proposed EC action programme was the question and pedagogics of equal opportunity in teachers” initial and in-service training. It was felt that there was a need to raise teachers” awareness of gender-related issues. Accordingly, Guidelines for Action were prepared by the ATEE and presented to the Commission of the European Communities. Project proposals were invited from teacher education institutions and organizations in all EC countries. Projects were to be jointly funded by the Commission and by the Ministries in member states. Relevance: The part of this paper that describes Gash’s project is explicitly a constructivist intervention project designed to help children develop their constructions of gender. While the other studies mentioned are not explicitly constructivist, their intention was to raise awareness in relation to gender equity in Ireland at that time.

Key words: Equal opportunities, constructions of gender, schooling, sexism

Schools aim to prepare learners for life, but in practice what they teach is knowledge that is disconnected from learners’ realities. Many contemporary education reforms attempt to bridge this gap between school and life by replacing the traditional transmission model of teaching with a more constructivist orientation to learning. In Quebec, pedagogical reform in adult education has resulted in new programs of study based explicitly on constructivist and situated approaches to learning, on the assumption that these two approaches are mutually reinforcing (knowledge is constructed by acting in situation). These programs aim to develop learners’ autonomy in exercising the social roles (as members of a family, consumers, workers and citizens) expected of them in their real-life situations: planning a family budget, finding affordable housing, applying for a job, voting in an election, etc. Considerable time and effort has been devoted to the development of these programs at the level of the official curriculum, but up until now little has been done to support their implementation at the classroom level. In this regard, the authors of Apprendre par l’expérience active et située [Learning Through Active, Situated Experience] outline a method and a set of pedagogical tools intended to help practitioners (teachers, pedagogical consultants) design learning and evaluation scenarios that address the real-life needs of their learners. It is referred to as the ASCAR method, the acronym ASCAR standing for the essential components of situated, experiential learning: action, situation, constructed knowledge (connaissance), attitudes and resources. The method is illustrated by two fully developed scenarios, one created for the Mathematics program and the other for the French Language program, both in adult general education. However, the method is sufficiently flexible and general to be applicable to any level of schooling (elementary, secondary, collegiate, literacy) and to both general and vocational education, including teacher training.

There is something of a controversy taking place over how best to theorize human learning. This article joins the debate over the relation between sociocultural and constructivist perspectives on learning. These 2 perspectives differ not just in their conceptions of knowledge (epistemological assumptions) but also in their assumptions about the known world and the knowing human (ontological assumptions). Articulated in this article are 6 themes of a nondualist ontology seen at work in the sociocultural perspective, and suggested is a reconciliation of the 2. This article proposes that learning involves becoming a member of a community, constructing knowledge at various levels of expertise as a participant, but also taking a stand on the culture of one’s community in an effort to take up and overcome the estrangement and division that are consequences of participation. Learning entails transformation both of the person and of the social world. This article explores the implications of this view of learning for thinking about schooling and for the conduct of educational research.

 Social constructivist perspectives focus on the interdependence of social and individual processes in the co-construction of knowledge. After the impetus for understanding the influence of social and cultural factors on cognition is reviewed, mechanisms hypothesized to account for learning from this perspective are identified, drawing from Piagetian and Vygotskian accounts. The empirical research reviewed illustrates (a) the application of institutional analyses to investigate schooling as a cultural process, (b) the application of interpersonal analyses to examine how interactions promote cognition and learning, and (c) discursive analyses examining and manipulating the patterns and opportunities in instructional conversation. The review concludes with a discussion of the application of this perspective to selected contemporary issues, including: acquiring expertise across domains, assessment, educational equity, and educational reform.

Key words: teaching, learning, context, collaboration

Context: Technology has not only changed the way we teach mathematical concepts but also the nature of knowledge, and thus what is possible to learn. While geometric transformations are recognized to be foundational to the formation of students’ geometric conceptions, little research has focused on how these notions can be introduced in elementary schooling. Problem: This project addressed the need for development of students’ reasoning about and with geometric transformations in elementary school. We investigated the nature of students’ understandings of translations, rotations, scaling, and stretching in two dimensions in the context of use of the software application Graphs ’n Glyphs. More specifically, we explored the question “What is the nature of elementary students’ reasoning of geometric transformations when instruction exploits the technological tool Graphs ’n Glyphs?” Method: Using a design research perspective, we present the conduct of a teaching experiment with one pair of fourth-graders, studying translation and rotation. The project investigated how and to what extent activity using Graphs ’n Glyphs can elicit students’ reasoning about geometric transformations, and explored the constraints and affordances of Graphs ’n Glyphs for thinking-in-change about geometric transformations. Results: The students proved adept using the software with carefully designed tasks to explore the behavior of two-dimensional shapes, distinguish among transformations, and develop predictions. In relation to varied conditions of transformations, they formed generalizations about the way a shape behaves, including the use of referent points in predicting outcomes of translations, and recognizing the role of the center of rotation. Implications: The generalizations that the students developed are foundational for developing an understanding of the properties of transformations in the later years of schooling. Dynamic technological approaches to geometry may prove as valuable to elementary students’ understanding of geometry as it is for older students. Constructivist content: This study contributes to ongoing constructivism/constructionism conversations by concentrating on the transformation of ideas when engaging learners in activity through particular contexts and tools. Key Words: Geometry, transformations, constructionist technologies.

Excerpt: I would like to show how the constructivist point of view makes it possible to develop a vision of the whole of educational phenomena which is comprehensive and penetrating and which, at the same time, is both viable and even fertile. This kind of vision would embrace education as much in terms of its psychological, developmental, socioaffective, and psychopedagogical aspects as of its cognitive and didactic aspects. By the same token, I would also like to show what occurs when the constructivist approach is widened to include all educational phenomena: It is possible at that point to contextualize and delimit application of the approach in relation to more specific problematics involved with schooling and teaching – two areas that, after all, form only a subset of the entire educational field.

Excerpt: What should guide reality construction? If we are not forced to reproduce the given social reality, what alternative realities should we try to construct – what economic institutions, what foreign policies, what roles for the sexes, what schooling, what care for the sick? In this chapter I want to propose a model that includes both sides of the coin: the liberation side emphasized by the constructivist writers, and the commitment side under-emphasized by them. These two aspects of the good life will be combined into a simple model that describes some common ethical positions (relativism and absolutism) as distorted or degenerate cases of an ideal case. This model is offered as a framework for a discussion of the values problem in constructivism, particularly in social research from a constructivist approach.

Excerpt: The introduction of compulsory schooling – in Western Europe during the long 19th century, reaching from Prussia (1764) to Belgium (1914) – has strengthened the role of organized education. How has this fact, viz. that education now takes place in an organized setting, influenced the nature of educational interaction? I want to tackle this complex question with the help of a systems-theoretical framework, inspired by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Departing from Luhmann’s writings on organizational theory, as well as from some of his shorter articles on education, this chapter focuses on the analysis of educational interaction in organized social systems.