Context: Public universities in South Africa are currently facing the challenge of decolonising knowledge. This change requires a review of curriculums, as well as teaching and learning with the goal of embracing the epistemology of the learners, addressing issues such as social justice and transformation. Problem: Human communication is subject to several perceptual errors in both listening and seeing, which challenges the success of the communication in the education system. The ability of the teacher and the learners to effectively communicate with one another is a factor for the success of each reaching their goals. The teacher imparts her knowledge in the classroom, but according to von Foerster, “[i]t is the listener, not the speaker, who determines the meaning of an utterance,” for the listener contextualises this information based on her own past lived experience. Thus, the student’s epistemology and her expression of her understanding is integral in the classroom context and should be actively included into the education system. Method: I present a cybernetic approach to the teacher-learner system, challenging traditional ideas about the role of each actor within the system, with special attention given to Pask’s conversation theory. Results: Early empirical findings suggest that a conversational contextual approach results in higher student involvement and better memory retention among the learners. Conversational approaches that are epistemologically inclusive diffuse social problems where the student groups require their individual worldviews to be reflected within the curriculum. This reduces the friction of competing epistemologies within the education system, moving toward a co-created contextually-driven knowledge system. Implications: Many educators would like deeper engagement from their learners but have not found a way to successfully engage the student group. A cybernetic approach is one method that can be adopted to remedy this. This is particularly useful in contexts where there is cultural diversity and impending social change. Constructivist content: I address von Glasersfeld’s points on human cognition, linking it to Austin’s speech acts.

Key words: Contextual approach, conversation theory, decolonisation of knowledge, education, epistemology, teaching and learning.

Context: South African public universities are currently undergoing a transitional period as they traverse the sensitive road of curriculum redesign that achieves an inclusive approach to education for the goal of the decolonisation of knowledge. Problem: Many classrooms have students from several cultural backgrounds yet in these spaces there is often a single dominant discourse on offer. An ethical question is raised in terms of what content should be addressed in the classroom. Method: An approach to curricula design as a conversation is presented. The philosophical aspects underlying shifts in epistemology are presented following an eclectic approach to curricula design that embraces second-order science in achieving the ongoing goal of decolonisation. The method used to achieve this goal is conversational heterarchical curriculum design assuming non quidem tabula rasa. Students can act as reference points (Nunataks) for curricula design, thus reducing the abstraction in the syllabus. Results: A heterarchical conversational approach offers a platform whereby social justice may be addressed in the classroom by providing a means by which the students’ own epistemology is embraced within the curriculum as the students provide the trajectory for the course content based on their own epistemology. A dynamic curriculum is then available that has immediate use in the communities that the students reside in. Students demonstrate understanding of the content as it is tied to their own way of knowing. Implications: The benefits of this approach include moving away from defining science according to a realist view. Educators may accept the idea that knowledge is not impartial and that method is tied to epistemology. When the observer is included in science, an awareness arises that theories (at least in the social sciences) affect what is studied, which in turn affects society. Constructivist content: The approach builds on von Foerster’s ideas on reflexivity. Pask’s conversation theory is a vehicle for the attainment of reflexive conversational teaching and learning.

Key words: Adaptation, curriculum design, conversation theory, cybernetics, decolonisation, ethics, heterarchy, nunatak, reflexivity, second-order science, ubuntuism.

Radical constructivism grows out of the belief that knowledge is constructed and legitimated by individuals as they make sense of their experiences in particular contexts and drawing on their own histories. Extending this understanding of learning and ways of knowing to girls as they work in the terrain of science, we argue that honoring student experience as the starting place for science instruction fundamentally alters the nature of science, the purpose of teaching and learning science, and the focus of relationships in science class. The implications for this position are extensive: they suggest that the dynamic relationships between language and cultural background of students and teachers alter the ways in which science education historically has enacted discipline, curriculum and pedagogy. We argue that this is particularly important to understand, for science and science education have historically operated within the masculine domain and working with girls in science in ways that respect their (gendered and cultural) construction of knowledge and their experiences, fundamentally alters the enterprise of science – an idea contradictory to most visions of the purposes of education and current reform efforts in science education, even the most liberal.

In this paper, the author has discussed the epistemological and the pedagogical dilemma he faced in the past and that he is still facing within radical and social constructivist paradigms. He built up an understanding of radical constructivism from the works of Ernst von Glasersfeld and social constructivism from the works of Paul Ernest. He introduced the notion of constructivism including both radical constructivism and social constructivism in brief. Then he reconceptualized these forms of constructivism in terms of epistemological and pedagogical motivation leading to a dilemma. He emphasized how the dilemma within these paradigms might impact one’s actions and how resolving this dilemma leads to eclecticism. He summarized that one paradigm world does not function well in the context of teaching and learning of mathematics (and science). Finally, he concluded the dilemma issue with epistemological and pedagogical eclecticism.

Key words: Radical constructivism, social constructivism, epistemological-pedagogical dilemma, epistemological eclecticism, pedagogical eclecticism.

Expressions like “constructivism,” “construction of knowledge,” “learners construct meaning,” and similar ones are starting to become part of the language of science education. We are liable to hear them in professional meetings or inservice workshops and to read them in articles in the professional journals. As the term constructivism becomes more widespread, different people tend to use it with slightly different meanings, and some use it in a loose way to designate a complex of different pedagogical, psychological, or philosophical tendencies. (The ideas about constructivism explained in this chapter are in no way to be taken as an attempt to define the “orthodoxy” of constructivism. Consistent with a constructivist view, they are simply a model of what it means to know. The claim of this model is to be a viable view of knowledge. This chapter aims at presenting the model and exploring from there some relations with teaching and learning of science.) These tendencies seem to have in common the central assumption that all we come to know is our own construction.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Cybernetic Approach to Contextual Teaching and Learning��� by Philip Baron. Upshot: I establish similarities between the author’s teaching approach and my perspective toward teaching and learning. I also highlight some important differences between the didactic situation of a university lecturer and that of a schoolteacher that may be pertinent to the principal issues we discuss in our articles.

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

The concept of constructivism has kindled a great deal of interest in many educational circles. Within the fields of mathematics and science education, many scholars from a diversity of backgrounds and interests are beginning to use constructivism as a way to make sense of educational phenomena. The purpose of this book is to explore the nature of constructivism as an epistemology and the role constructivist thinking can have in teaching and learning contexts. The idea of constructivism has stimulated debate recently in educational circles, and the chapters of this book add important contributions to the ongoing discussions about knowledge, knowing, teaching, learning, and research in mathematics and science education.

Context: Sustainability is among major societal goals in our days. Education is acknowledged as an essential strategy for attaining sustainability by activating the creative potential within young people to understand sustainability, bring forth changes in their everyday life, and collectively envision a more sustainable future. Problem: However, teaching and learning about sustainability and sustainability-related issues is not an easy task due to the inherent complexity, ambiguity, and context-specificity of the concept. We are in need of innovative pedagogical approaches and tools that will allow us to design learning activities in which learners will be empowered to develop new, alternative interpretations of sustainability in personally and collectively meaningful ways. Method: We argue that a constructionist perspective involving the use of expressive media for digital storytelling offers an appropriate frame for designing learning activities fostering collaborative creativity in thinking and learning about urban sustainability. Our study is based on the design of a learning activity following this rationale. We adopted a qualitative approach in the collection and analysis of different sources of data with the aim to explore collaborative creativity as a learning process based on the students’ collective processes and resulting in the co-construction of new ideas and insights about sustainability, and new tangible artefacts (the digital stories) encompassing them. Results: Our analysis of the collaborative creativity exemplified in the three digital stories produced identified important creative elements with regards to the three components of a digital story (script, technical characteristics, and ideas of urban sustainability) and how they were embodied in each digital story produced as a result of the students’ joint constructionist activity. Implications: Our study provides some preliminary evidence that collaborative creativity from a constructionist perspective can stand as an appropriate framework for designing learning activities addressing the difficult concept of sustainability. There are several implications for both theory and educational practice in environmental education and education for sustainable development, constructionism, and digital storytelling in education. Moreover, our study opens up new fields for research and theory in creativity.

Key words: Sustainability, urban sustainability, collaborative creativity, constructionism, digital storytelling, learning design.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Cybernetic Approach to Contextual Teaching and Learning��� by Philip Baron. Upshot: Philip Baron is challenged to clarify the link between his admirable efforts at teaching and research. To allow for a counterchallenge a method to transfer his experiences is summarised that is equivalent to the scientific method.