Open peer commentary on the article “Heterarchical Reflexive Conversational Teaching and Learning as a Vehicle for Ethical Engineering Curriculum Design” by Philip Baron. Upshot: Baron locates the decolonisation of the curriculum within the classroom, repurposing radically constructivist approaches to teaching and learning and giving them a sense of social and political urgency. The inclusion of students’ worldviews in the curriculum is best thought of as the beginning of a process rather than an end in itself. This leads beyond the pedagogic focus of Baron’s article, raising questions about the status of professional knowledge and whose terms equality is offered on.

This chapter sets out the basis of one version of constructivism that is informed by findings from both cognitive science and from educational studies exploring learners’ thinking about curriculum topics and about classroom processes. A key concept here is the way in which new learning is contingent on features of the learner, the learning context and the teaching. It offers a theoretical basis for designing effective pedagogy that is accessible to classroom teachers. The chapter will explain that although constructivism understood this way certainly offers the basis for learner-centered teaching, it is far from “minimally-guided” instruction. Rather, a feature of this approach is that it does not adopt doctrinaire allegiance to particular levels of teacher input (as can be the case with teaching through discovery learning, or direct instruction) but rather the level of teacher guidance (a) is determined for particular learning activities by considering the learners and the material to be learnt, and (b) shifts across sequences of teaching and learning episodes, and includes potential for highly structured guidance, as well as more exploratory activities.

Constructivism has been widely adopted as a referent for research, curriculum development and recommended pedagogy in education. This chapter considers key issues relating to the adoption of constructivist thinking in education which have arisen within the field of science education. Constructivism has been mooted as a dominant paradigm in science education, where it has informed a major research programme over some decades. However, the application of constructivist ideas in science education has also been subject to a range of critiques. This chapter gives an outline of the developing influence of constructivism in science education, and the common understandings of the term in relation to science teaching and learning; it reports on the main areas where the influence of constructivist thinking has been heavily criticised, and discusses how these criticisms are countered within the research programme; it considers some major directions for research within the research programme; and it evaluates the level of influence of constructivism in contemporary science education practice.

George Kelly’s professional focus was on supporting people who were struggling with the stresses of their lives. Finding that the Freudian ideas he had been offered as tools in his own professional training offered little in working towards change with many of his clients, Kelly developed his own approach based upon a constructivist perspective of learning (which he called constructive alternativism) centred on the core metaphor of person-as-scientist. People, like good scientists, should always be open to exploring new data and considering alternative explanations and conceptions, rather than becoming fixed in established ways of thinking. Kelly’s work developed into a recognised approach in psychology, and became very influential in at least one school of thought in science education. Kelly did not only offer a theory that could support clinical practice for therapists, but also offered a methodology for exploring a learner’s developing thinking. In his own educational work, he found that his approach offered insights into teachers’ classroom difficulties. This chapter considers the core ideas of Kelly’s theory in comparison with other constructivist perspectives employed in science education. The chapter also discusses how Kelly’s personal construct theory can inform classroom teaching and reflects on an approach that explicitly expects people to behave scientifically as a perspective on science teaching and learning.

Key words: the method of triads, repertory grid, personal constructs, constructivism, children’s science, alternative conceptions, person-as-scientist, falsificationism, accumulative fragmentalism, systems of constructs, building one’s own maze, construct repertory

Excerpt: I consider four versions – personal constructivism, radical constructivism, social constructivism, and critical constructivism. These have had a major impact on science education and greater impacts than other forms/versions. I start with a brief consideration of Piaget’s cognitive constructivism, which laid the foundations for the emergence of the “Big Four,” and I conclude with an integral perspective on using different versions of constructivism to shape science teaching and learning.

Key words: cognitive constructivism, critical constructivism, personal constructivism, radical constructivism, social constructivism.

Excerpt: The focus for the research described in this chapter is on teacher learning and curriculum change. We were interested in factors associated with teachers making changes in their classrooms and institutionalizing those changes. The program of research has been in progress since 1984 and continues today (e.g., Tobin 1990a, Tobin and Espinet 1989; Tobin and Fraser 1987; Tobin and Gallagher 1987; Tobin et al. 1990; Tobin and Ulerick 1989). Throughout the entire research program, we have focused on the teacher and the rationale for teaching practices. Our research questions have involved teacher beliefs and other cognitive factors such as metaphors. It is now clear that a prerequisite to understanding the change process is to understand the culture in which teaching and learning are embedded.

Excerpt: The remainder of this chapter consists of four sections in which sociocultural perspectives are used to illuminate issues associated with the teaching and learning of science. Examples from my professional history are used to illustrate the role of theory in making sense of experience, learning from concrete experiences, the significance of coparticipation in learning science, and science as a form of symbolic violence for students. Implications for the practice of science education are presented in a conclusion that acknowledges that the perspectives I have employed in this chapter are useful in bringing certain issues into the foreground but, in so doing, push other issues into a background of obscurity.

This article reviews the significance of the contributions of Ernst von Glasersfeld to research in science education, especially through his theoretical contribu-tions on radical constructivism. As a field shaper, Glasersfeld’s subversive ideas catalyzed debate in the science education community and fuelled transformation of many facets including research methods, ways of thinking about teaching and learning, curriculum, and science teacher education. Perturbations emanating from the debates on constructivism forged new pathways that led to the development and use of many of the sociocultural frameworks employed by authors in Cultural Studies of Science Education.

Key words: Radical constructivism, epistemology, realism, transforming science education, history.

Excerpt: A look at the literature published in high impact journals identifies more than three thousand publications that used the keywords constructivism or constructivist from the mid 1970s to the present. In the database the first reference to constructivism is in 1967, increasing to 12 sources by 1976. From 1993 onwards the trajectory increased to more than 100 sources a year and then, since 1999 more than 200 sources a year refer to constructivism. Of course this is the tip of an iceberg since the vast majority of the literature is not included in the Web of Science database and many articles probably address constructivism without including the term either in the title, abstract or keywords. Nonetheless, the trend provides insights into a revolution involving constructivism. Perhaps it is too soon to judge whether this revolution made a difference and possibly I am like the fish that is unable to know about the water in which it lives – I used constructivism to improve science education and had a stake in it being successful. From where I stand as an urban science educator, changes occurred because constructivism is a subversive process that got people thinking about the purposes of education and the nature of teaching and learning. Although there are times when it seems as if nothing has changed at all in education research, the wheels of change still turn and do not seem to be easily reversed. Furthermore, from my experience, constructivism itself was not immune from the change process because it too changed and then was subsumed in a new wave of sociocultural theory that is just as subversive as constructivism.

Context: This paper outlines how radical constructivist theory has led to a particular methodological technique, developing second-order models of student thinking, that has helped mathematics educators to be more effective teachers of their students. Problem: The paper addresses the problem of how radical constructivist theory has been used to explain and engender more viable adaptations to the complexities of teaching and learning. Method: The paper presents empirical data from teaching experiments that illustrate the process of second-order model building. Results: The result of the paper is an illustration of how second-order models are developed and how this process, as it progresses, supports teachers to be more effective. Implications: This paper has the implication that radical constructivism has the potential to impact practice.

Key words: Second-order model, radical constructivism, teaching, mathematics education