Instructional research underlines the significance of cognitive activation and constructive support as features of the quality of teaching, with special emphasis on their conception as quality features of teaching-learning-processes. The focal point of recent debates has been the model of offer and use. Following this figure of offer and use, the task is to integrate not only offer-related stimuli (instruction, material, etc.), but also processes of the reconstruction of knowledge into the conception of teaching quality. The contribution therefore also takes into consideration argumentation-related approaches that allow for a reconstruction and an empirical recording of such processes of knowledge acquisition. Using the inferential theory of teaching and learning, a systematics is developed that forms the basis for the procedural conception of cognitive activation and constructive support. Finally, the operationalization and empirical recording of these constructs via video-graphic and video-analytical procedures is presented.

This article presents an investigation into the meaning of ‘learning’ It uses cybernetics as a framework to look at the fundamental questions of: What is learning and why do people learn? Why do they learn this (and not something else)? How does learning happen? The article first describes the origin of cybernetics and its central tenets of circularity, feedback and communication, which suggest that learning is fundamentally about living. The living system learns as it fits with the environment in an integrated brain/body/environment learning system. This leads to a discussion of teaching and learning as building relationships with self and others in communication, with self and others, with or without the intention of changing and being changed in the encounter. Teacher and learner inevitably change (learn) as they interact whatever the context. The article suggests that what is happening in the encounter between teacher and learner, that which we call ‘learning’, happens to each of us in the same way all of the time. Learning is change; change learning. ‘Teacher’ and ‘Learner’ change (learn) together in a constant feedback network of communication.

In the first part of the article I present an epistemological critique of forms of pedagogy founded on Piagetian constructivism. Despite the appeal of the notion that learners construct their understanding, I argue that constructivism is problematic because it ignores the subjectivity of the learner and the socially and historically situated nature of knowing; it denies the essentially collaborative and social nature of meaning making; and it privileges only one form of knowledge, namely, the technical rational. I then present a critique of active learning and student-centered forms of pedagogy. I argue that in our models of teaching we rely on too many unexamined assumptions from developmental psychology and we take for granted the problematic notion that children learn by doing. My central thesis is that constructivism is flawed because of its inability to come to grips with the essential issues of culture, power, and discourse in the classroom. In the concluding section of the article I present a preliminary account of a sociocultural approach to teaching and learning that takes seriously the notion that learning is situated in contexts, that students bring their own subjectivities and cultural perspectives to bear in constructing understanding, that issues of power exist in the classroom that need to be addressed, and that education into scientific ways of knowing requires understanding modes of classroom discourse and enabling students to negotiate these modes effectively so that they may master and critique scientific ways of knowing without, in the process, sacrificing their own personally and culturally constructed ways of knowing.

Context: Radical constructivism (RC) is seen as a fruitful way to teach innovation, as Ernst von Glasersfeld’s concepts of knowing, learning, and teaching provide an epistemological framework fostering processes of generating an autonomous conceptual understanding. Problem: Classical educational approaches do not meet the requirements for teaching and learning innovation because they mostly aim at students’ competent performance, not at students’ understanding and developing their creative capabilities. Method: Analysis of theoretical principles from the constructivist framework and how they can be used as a foundation for designing a course in the field of innovation. The empirical results are based on qualitative journal entries that were coded and categorized according to Charmaz’s grounded theory approach. Results: It is shown that there is a close relationship between learning and innovation processes. The proposed investigated course design based on RC incorporates the following concepts: the course setting is understood as a framework to guide understanding; students work in teams and are subjective constructors of their own knowledge; instructors take on the role of coaches, guiding students through an innovation process as co-creators. Such a framework facilitates dynamic processes of assimilation and accommodation, as well as perturbation through the “other,” which potentially lead to novel, and viable, conceptual structures crucial for sustainable innovation. Constructivist Content: The paper argues in favor of RC principles in the context of teaching and learning. The proposed course setting is oriented at von Glasersfeld’s understanding of knowing, learning, and teaching (vs. training. It outlines theoretical and practical aspects of these principles in the context of a course design for innovation. Furthermore, it shows the importance of von Glasersfeld’s concept of intersubjectivity for processes of accommodation and the generation of (novel) autonomous conceptual structures. The interplay between creating coherence, perturbation, and irritation through interacting with the “other” (in the form of co-students and instructors) is assumed to be vital for such processes, as it leads to the creation of not only novel but also viable conceptual structures, therefore re-establishing a relative equilibrium critical for sustainable innovation.

Key words: Innovation, teaching, learning, course design, co-creation, Enabling Space, radical constructivism.

Constructivism, or more precisely, a constructivist metatheory, presently prevails throughout professional education circles. Most educators easily accept constructivism’s central premise that learners approach tasks with prior knowledge and expectations based on their knowledge of the world around them. Naturally, then, constructivist educational technologists have been guided by the implicit (and increasingly explicit) desire to create “authentic” environments for learning: environments that correspond to the real world. In this paper, I argue that technologists have tended to paper over the critical epistemological dimension of constructivism by “preauthenticating” learning environments: creating environments that are predetermined to reflect the real world even though constructivist theory contrindicates precisely this. I suggest that a rhetorical perspective on constructivism offers a way out of this bind and I propose some guidelines to assist developers of educational technologies in accommodating the essentially dialogic nature of teaching and learning.

Constructivism, or more precisely, a constructivist metatheory, presently prevails throughout professional education circles. Most educators easily accept constructivism’s central premise that learners approach tasks with prior knowledge and expectations based on their knowledge of the world around them. Naturally, then, constructivist educational technologists have been guided by the implicit (and increasingly explicit) desire to create “authentic” environments for learning: environments that correspond to the real world. In this paper, I argue that technologists have tended to paper over the critical epistemological dimension of constructivism by “pre- authenticating” learning environments: creating environments that are predetermined to reflect the real world even though constructivist theory contrindicates precisely this. I suggest that a rhetorical perspective on constructivism offers a way out of this bind and I propose some guidelines to assist developers of educational technologies in accommodating the essentially dialogic nature of teaching and learning.

Open peer commentary on the article “Heterarchical Reflexive Conversational Teaching and Learning as a Vehicle for Ethical Engineering Curriculum Design” by Philip Baron. Upshot: The target article advocates the use of conversational heterarchical curriculum design as part of the process of decolonisation in South African universities. A stated objective is to reduce the amount of abstraction in the syllabus. I discuss whether the reduction of abstraction is an appropriate aim of decolonisation, considering some of the potential consequences and questioning whether a less abstract teaching style would be advisable in practical terms and compatible with students’ values.

Ernst von Glasersfeld, *1917, studied mathematics in Zurich and Vienna, was a farmer in County Dublin during the War, and worked as a journalist in Italy from 1947. There he met the philosopher and cybernetician Silvio Ceccato who, in the beginning stages of the computer age, had gathered a team of researchers in order to carry out projects of computational linguistic analysis and automatic language translation. Ernst von Glasersfeld became a close collaborator of Ceccato’s, translated for him, and developed projects of his own. In 1966, he moved to the USA where he was made a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Georgia in 1970. Three principal research interests have made him one of the well-known founders of constructivism. He systematically scoured the history of European philosophy for varieties of epistemological skepticism and set up an ancestral gallery reaching back to the insights of the ancient skeptics of the 4th century B. C. He replaced the classical realist concept of truth by the idea of viability: theories need not and do not correspond with what is real, he says, but they must be practicable and useful, they must be viable. Finally, he introduced the work of the Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, into the constructivist debate. Jean Piaget, in his book La construction du reel chez l’enfant, constructs a model of how knowledge is created and developed through the confirmation or disappointment of expectations (or, more precisely, of particular patterns of action, so-called schemes). A model of this kind has profound consequences for the conception of learning and teaching: it eliminates the reification of information and knowledge, the conception of knowledge as a substance that can be transferred from the teacher’s head to the empty heads of students. The mechanical idea of teaching evaporates. We must face the ineluctable subjectivity of meanings and given cognitive patterns. From this perspective, the acquisition of knowledge no longer appears to be a passive reception of information but a creative activity. The upshot is that teaching someone something will only be successful if it is oriented toward the reality of that someone. Ernst von Glasersfeld is, at present, with the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts. There he works on models of teaching and learning that apply the theory of constructivism to school practice.

Teachers are viewed as important agents of change in the reform effort currently under way in education and thus are expected to play a key role in changing schools and classrooms. Paradoxically, however, teachers are also viewed as major obstacles to change because of their adherence to outmoded forms of instruction that emphasize factual and procedural knowledge at the expense of deeper levels of understanding. New constructivist approaches to teaching and learning, which many reformers advocate, are inconsistent with much of what teachers believe – a problem that may be overcome if teachers are willing to rethink their views on a number of issues. This article seeks to advance this cause by identifying important aspects of current thinking that may get in the way of teachers adopting a constructivist approach to teaching and learning.

Excerpt: A number of intentions triggered this research forum on enactivism and mathematics education research, and those are significant to highlight as they have in return structured the content and form that this forum takes. First, there has been and continues to be a substantial amount of research and writing on issues of enactivism undertaken by mathematics education researchers; thus we wanted to highlight and synthesize this body of research. At the same time, although much research has been conducted within the enactivist perspective, many of those contributions, and their authors, are not always well known and have often been seen merely as “interesting” orientations or “alternative” perspectives – but clearly not mainstream. Because we believe enactivism offers an insightful orientation which shows promise for enhancing our understanding of mathematics teaching and learning, we wanted to bring forth the nature and wide spectrum of enactivist contributions in order to share and create dialogue with the PME community about significant issues raised through this orientation. A third intention is in reaction to what might be thought of as a hegemony of constructivism in the mathematics education literature. We believe that enactivism, as a theory of cognition, offers a more encompassing and enlightening perspective on learning, teaching, and epistemology. Therefore, the following concerns will orient and be continuously present in the research forum unfoldings: retrospectives (as well as perspectives and prospectives) on research studies and writing done on enactivism in mathematics education will be shared; contributors will focus on insightful features that enactivism offers us; particularities of enactivism as a theory of cognition will permeate all discussions and presentations; and finally, but not least, interactions and discussions will take place about the ideas put forward.