Work @ TAFE

I just finished reading Martin Dougiamas’ reflection A Journey into Constructivism. It helpfully presented Martin’s own reflections from learning about constructivism in a format that espouses the benefits of constructivism - as best as one can in an essay! (I guess this essay designed to demonstrate his understanding of constructivism).

The five modes of constructivism identified by the author are as follows:

• Trivial Constructivism
• Radical Constructivism
• Social Constructivism
• Cultural Constructivism
• Critical Constructivism

(The fact that I just remembered all five without referring back to the essay is testament to the clarity of the essay!) I want to overview these concepts briefly before going to play with Mim (daughter) before they slip my mind!

Trivial Constructivism

Trivial perhaps because it is obvious, trivial constructivism is summed up neatly in the essay (?) as

Knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, not passively received from the environment.

Radical Constructivism

Bordering on relativism, radical constructivism sounds similar to the common ideology that everyone constructs their own reality inside their head. While I think this is in some ways true, I wouldn’t go so far as to treat each reality as equally valid nor without context! Most probably my very new understanding of this term is overly simplified and incorrect!

Social Constructivism

Social Constructivism tempers radical constructivism by saying that we construct reality within our own minds yet in the context of our social learning environment. A social-learning environment in the classroom provides a very obvious example of participants learning from the interactions with the facilitator and each other. Each participant’s own landscape of knowledge, beliefs and experience will receive the flow of liquid “content” differently, with meaning gathering or dispersing differently within each participants mind. Furthermore, participants can interact with the flow of the meaning through each others mental-landscape as they question/discuss/encourage each others’ input.

Actually, in hindsight, the analogy of a mental landscape is a bad one in this situation (I think it came from some Edward deBono book that I read years ago about the mind as a self-organising system - I am right, you are wrong: from rock logic to Water Logic). It produces an image of meaning being determined by each participant’s mental landscape, rather than meaning being actively constructed.

Cultural Constructivism

Outside of the immediate social learning environment is the cultural environment of the society, group or school within which the learning is taking place. I’m a bit hazy on the distinction between social and cultural constructivism… guess I’ll need to read more. Does anyone else have helpful input here?

Critical Constructivism

Assuming social and cultural constructivism, critical constructivism seems to be like the term meta-cognition (thinking about thinking). I think the gist of it is reflecting on the constructivism occuring within a learning environment so that constructive steps can be taken to modify the learning environment itself, perhaps challenging social or cultural assumptions. Again, I’ve probably way over-simplified the concept, but it’s a start… am I on the right track?

All in all, a very worthwhile piece of reading! (the original essay by Martin that is!)