Brown, J., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, Jan/Feb, 32-42.
I’m not sure whether these articles are making more sense to me now because I’m getting a stronger grasp on the underlying theories or if it’s just that they are better written. Probably a bit of both.
Brown, Collins and Duguid present their ideas about why content is more meaningful to learners when it is put into context in an easily understandable way, using plenty of examples as well as some very effective analogies. Their approach seems much more anchored in chalkface experience and constantly focusses on educational practice in schools, rather that making lofty prognostications about what approaches might be beneficial for learners.
Key points:
“Many methods of didactic education assume a separation between knowing and doing, treating knowledge as an integral, self-sufficient substance, theoretically independent of the situations in which it is learned and used.”
We should “embed learning in activity and make deliberate use of the social and physical context”
Learning vocabulary with a dictionary and a few example (but out of context) sentences is different to the way words are learnt in day to day life – through use in normal conversation and reading. “Experienced readers implicitly understand that words are situated. They, therefore, ask for the rest of the sentence or the context before committing themselves to an interpretation of a word”
“All knowledge is, we believe, like language. It’s constituent parts index the world and so are intextricably a product of the activity and situations in whch they are produced”
“A concept, like the meaning of a word, is always under construction”
“It may be more useful to consider conceptual knowledge as, in some ways, similar to a set of tools. Tools share several significant features with knowledge – They can only be fully understood with use and using them entails both changing the users view of the world and adopting the belief system in which they are used.”
“People who use tools actively rather than just acquire them, by contrast, build an increasingly rich implicit understanding of the world in which they use the tools and of the tools themselves. The understanding, both of the world and of the tool, continually changes as a result of their interaction”
“Learning how to use a tool involves far more than can be accounted for in any set of explicit rules. The occasions and conditions for use arise directly out of the context of activities of each community that uses the tool, framed by the way members of that community see the world… Thus carpenters and cabinet makers use chisels differently”
“Activity, concept and culture are interdependent. No one can be totally understood without the other two. Learning must involve all three”
“(Students) need to be exposed to the use of a domain’s conceptual tools in authentic activity – to teachers acting as practitioners and using these tools in wrestling with the problems of the world. Such activity can tease out the way a mathematician or historian looks at the world and solves emergent problems. (But maths is a tool used in different ways by different practitioners – eg mathematician vs statistician vs engineer – how do you apply context there – perhaps by looking at the content being covered and seeing who it is most applicable to?)
“Activity also provides experience, which is plainly important for subsequent action”
“Knowledge… indexes the situation in which it arises and is used. The embedding circumstances efficiently provide essential parts of its structure and meaning”
“By beginning with a task embedded in a familiar activity, it shows the students the legitimacy of their implicit knowledge and its availability as scaffolding in apparently unfamiliar tasks”
“By allowing students to generate their own solution paths, it helps make them conscious, creative members of the culture of problem-solving mathematicians. And, in enculturating though this activity, they acquire some of the cultures tools – a shared vocabulary and the means to discuss, reflect upon, evaluate and validate community procedures in a collaborative process”
“Collaboration also leads to the articulation of strategies, which can then be discussed and reflected on. This, in turn, fosters generalising, grounding in the students situated understanding”
“… teachers or coaches promote learning, firstly by making explicit their tacit knowledge or by modelling their strategies for students in authentic activity. Then, teachers and colleagues support student’s attempts at doing the task. And finally they empower the students to continue independently”
“An intriguing role in learning is played by ‘legitimate peripheral participation’, where people who are not taking part directly in a particular activity learn a great deal from their legitimate position on the periphery”
“This peripheral participation is particularly important for people entering the culture. They need to observe how practitioners at various levels behave and talk to get a sense of how expertise is manifest in conversation and other activities”
“Collective problem solving: Groups are not just a convenient way to accumulate the individual knowledge of their members. They give rise synergistically to insights and solutions that would not come about without them”
“Displaying multiple roles: Successful execution of most individual tasks requires students to understand the many different roles needed for carrying out any cognitive task. Getting one person to be able to play all the roles entailed by authentic activity and to reflect productively upon his or her performance is one of the monumental tasks of education. The group, however, permits different roles to be displayed and engenders reflective narratives and discussions about the aptness of those roles” – Is it enough for people to be able to discuss the tasks that someone else undertook in a group task for them to understand what is really involved without having done it?
“Groups can be efficient in drawing out, confronting and discussing both misconceptions and ineffective strategies”
Overall, a lot of interesting ideas here – it got a little more abstract as it continued and the concepts got more advanced but most of it makes sense.
April 25th, 2007
Robyler, M. D., Edwards, J., & Havriluk, M. A. (1997). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (pp. 54-79). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Ok well this is a slightly more sizable piece of writing, let’s see how I go here.
Again, essentially an overview of differences between behaviourist/cognitivist (here referred to as directed instruction) and constructivist theory and practice.
Chapter begins with a guide to what is to be covered, a nice “advanced organiser” approach which gives the learner a mental framework to hang the new knowledge on.
- Information age means that we are constantly playing catchup and learning to learn is seen by many as a key skill.
- Need to become more effective decision makers.
- Directed Instruction = Behaviourism + Information processing branch of cognitivism
- Constructivism = comes from other branches of cognitivism (mainly a reaction to directed instruction approaches)
- Both theories focus on what Gagne calls “the conditions of learning”
Strengths of Directed Instruction approach
- can allow for individual pacing (students can be busy while teacher supports slower students)
- efficient (skill practice through drills)
- provides foundation skills needed for higher level skills
- instruction is replicable, quality is consistent
- some students like a structured learning environment
Strengths of Constructivist approach
- encourages higher level skills – problem solving, teamwork/collaboration, critical thinking, research
- adds context/relevance as a motivator and to anchor learning to students experiences
- students pushed to figure out what they need to learn to solve problems
Tennyson (1990) claims that about 30% of learning time should be spent on “acquiring knowledge” (e.g. verbal info and procedural knowledge) and 70% spent on the “employment of knowledge” (e.g., contextual skills, cognitive strategies and creative processes)
More about Directed Instruction:
- learning as a sequence of stimulus and response (response is the best indicator that learning has occurred)
- teachers and resources are the stimuli, skills demonstrated are the response
- information processing theory – learning = input variables (info) + processor (attention + short/long term memory) + outputs (responses)
- inputs that receive attention go to short-term memory (stm) for 5-20 secs, then on to long term (ltm) (hopefully)
- teachers shape info to make it more likely to move from stm to ltm, give practice exercises to help it.
Gagne’s events of instruction
- Gaining attention
- Informing the learner of the objective
- Stimulating the recall of prerequisite info
- Presenting new material
- Providing learning guidance (cognitivist tools ?)
- Eliciting performance
- Providing feedback about correctness
- Assessing performance
- Enhancing retention and recall
Gagne’s learning hierarchy – build base skills first needed for more complex ones.
Systematic instructional design / Systems approaches – step by step process for preparing instructional materials
Problems with Directed Instruction approach
- leads to standardised testing => (teaching to the test)
- regimented
- weak support for higher level skills of problem solving etc
- more oriented to individuals, not group work (which is more prevalent in “the real world”)
More about Constructivism
The more I read about Constructivism, the more it annoys me. It’s ill defined, it seems to identify itself largely in terms of what it isn’t (i.e. directed instruction) and while some of it’s ideas are common sense – using real world examples to add motivation to content, using multimedia, developing problem solving and critical reflection skills – they seem fairly easy to apply to other approaches.
I’m also unconvinced about the obsession with collaborative group work (how do you ensure that all members of the group have digested the required knowledge and aren’t just coasting) as it seems oriented to creating happy little worker drones.
Some of the ideas about allowing learners all the time they want to discover things and also letting them learn things in the ways that they think are most suited seem completely divorced from the reality of a classroom. (Particularly in the VET sector).
I can see some use in a collaborative approach that encompasses students from a range of disciplines – for example, putting on a major music festival, with a student from design, p.r, public events, OHS etc I guess.
Anyway, this is what Robyler et al. have to say about it.
- focus on students motivation to learn and relevance to the real world
- activities meaningful to a student’s own experience
- provides scaffolding through supervised collaborative activities
According to Piaget: sometimes they fit new experiences into their existing schemes or patterns of behaviour, a process he called assimilation; sometimes they change their existing schemes to incorporate new experiences, which he called accommodation.
According to Lev Vygotsky: “children begin learning from the world around them, their social world, which is the source of all their concepts, ideas, facts, skills and attitudes”
According to Bruner: Discovery learning is an approach to instruction through which students interact with their environment – by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies or performing experiments
Teachers have found that discovery learning is most successful when students have prerequisite knowledge and undergo some structured experiences
According to Rand Spiro (et al.) :Cognitive Flexibility theory – calls for students to generate not only solutions to new problems but also the prior knowledge needed to solve the problems.
According to CTGV: Inert knowledge is “knowledge that can usually be recalled when people are explicitly asked to do so but is not used spontaneously in problem solving even though it is relevant”
Constructivist approaches:
- Problem oriented activities
- Visual mental models of problems to be solved
- Rich media environments
- Cooperative/collaborative group learning
- Learning through exploration
- Qualitative assessment – student portfolios, teacher narratives of student work habits, performance based assessments in combination with checklists of criteria for judging student performance
Problems with Constructivism:
- “Many teachers are still bound by the constraints of required curricula and they must ensure that their students accomplish existing district objectives as well as newer, more constructivist ones”
- Sometimes instructional activities based on constructivist models are more time-consuming, since they may call for teachers to organise and facilitate group work and to evaluate in authentic ways. By comparison, paper-and-pencil tests are both quicker to develop and easier to administer
- Papert feels that learning activities should be fairly unstructured and open-ended, frequently with no goal in mind other than discovery of “powerful ideas”
- How can one certify skill learning? – Just because a team of med students succeed in an operation, can all of them do it
- Are students able to find their own prior knowledge?
- Can students learn this knowledge in the best way?
- Little evidence that skills learnt this way do actually transfer to real world situations
- Minimal objective evidence to back it up.
Technology Integration Strategies
These are a few of the reasons that the writers offer to make more use of technology in the classroom.
Directed Models
- Self paced drills/tutorials allow lagging students to spend time catching up and make them feel less self-conscious
- Drill and practice help prerequisite skills become more automatic
- Advanced tutorials/resources can be made available to advanced students wishing to skip ahead
- I.T tools such as Word, CAD etc reduce some logistical tools – don’t teach skills in themselves but make production of student work easier
- I.T tools optimise scarce resources – stationery, teachers, simulations of lab experiments
Constructivist Models
- Add motivation
- Support creativity
- Allow for reflection
- Using more visual models of problems and creation of multimedia helps bypass literacy issues in some students
- Enhances cooperative work
Issues to consider in introducing technology to teaching
- Assessment for constructivist activities should be planned to occur over long time-frames
- Assessment should dovetail with the activities
- Flexibility is important – might need to change things as you are going
- Finding a balance between directed and constructivist approaches requires some experimentation.
Parts I’m unsure of
- Constructivists claim use of multimedia etc as relatively unique tool to overcome lack of base skills (eg literacy) but it can be used in any approach
- Simply accepting literacy problems and finding work-arounds feels wrong – literacy is a fundamental skill
- Critical reflection requires the ability to assess data and sources but more importantly the learner needs to care about it in the first place
April 21st, 2007
Ertmer, P.A. & Newby, T.J. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4), 50-72. (abstract)
This article discusses behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism from an adult learning/training perspective.
Ok, so a few pages in and I’m already really appreciating the attitude towards learning taken by the authors. Their emphasis is squarely on how to take learning theories – behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism – and translate them into concrete practical ideas and exercises for learning.
They’ve made it very clear that they see value in all of the theories and that the role of the instructional designer (I.D) is to understand all of the theories and be able to identify which learning situations they are best suited for. This comes down to the types of learners, the types of teachers presenting the material, the material itself and the context in which it is to be presented.
Understanding the theories allows the I.D to find the strategies and tactics in each for effective learning, know which ones to use, figure out how to integrate them into the learning environment and predict which will be most successful.
It offers a list of 7 questions that can be used to differentiate the theories.
- How does learning occur?
- Which factors influence learning?
- What is the role of memory?
- How does transfer* occur?
- What types of learning are best explained by this theory?
- What basic assumptions/principles of this theory are relevant to instructional design?
- How should instruction be structured to facilitate learning?
*Transfer refers to the application of learned knowledge in new ways or situations, as well as to how prior learning affects new learning. (e.g. A student learns how to recognise/classify elms trees and then applies the same methods to maple trees)
Two opposing theories on the origin of knowledge – empiricism vs rationalism. Empiricism posits that knowledge comes from sensory input and our experiences, which we mesh together to form more complex associations. Seems reasonable. The learning focus comes in controlling the environment to maximise the occurence of associations.
Rationalism on the other hand says that learners discover what is already in their minds and knowledge is developed by reflection on what they already know in combination with the observations that trigger or reveal this knowledge. (This seems a little harder to grasp imho. The rationalist approach focuses on the best ways to structure new information so it is effectively encoded and sparks recall of related things that are already known. )
Behaviourism – learning (knowledge) takes the form of a response to stimuli (eg teacher holds up a flash card that says 4 + 2 = and the student says 6) – the primary focus is how the association between the stimulus and response is made, strengthed and maintained. Responses followed by reinforcement are more likely to recur in the future.
Behaviourism seems more useful (to me) in fact based situations. (As opposed to analytical / creative ones)
Hey, what do you know, the next question says much the same thing -
“These prescriptions have generally been proven reliable and effective in facilitating learning that includes discriminations (recalling facts), generalisations (defining and illustrating concepts), assocations (applying explanations), and chaining (automatically performing a specified procedure). However it is generally agreed the behavioural principles cannot adequately explain the acquisition of higher level skills or those that require a greater depth of processing (e.g., language development, problem solving, inference generating, critical thinking)(Schunk,1991)”
How Behaviourism is relevant to instructional design:
- An emphasis on producing observable and measurable outcomes in students [behavioural objectives, task analysis, criterion-reference assessment]
- Pre-assessment of students to determine where instruction should begin [learner analysis]
- Emphasis on mastering early steps before progressing to more complex levels of performance [sequencing of instructional presentation, mastery learning]
- use of reinforcement to impact performance [tangible rewards, informative feedback]
- Use of cues, shaping and practice to ensure a strong stimulus-response assocation [simple to complex sequencing of practice, use of prompts]
Stimulus is about something that the learner needs to know – generally as a question or an instruction to complete a task, the response is the answer or the successful completion of the task. Cues can be presented to facilitate the learning needed to create the correct response – examples of the correct answer or way to do something and repetition and reinforcement lead to the correct response being provided without the learner needing to rely on cues.
Cognitivism – this focusses more on more complex cognitive processes such as thinking, problem solving, language, concept formation and information processing.
It seems to be about equipping learners with effective learning strategies to process the information that they are given – as well as factoring in the students own beliefs and thought processes in interpreting/measuring how well they understand the knowledge.
Much more emphasis on connecting prior knowledge (which might not be exactly the same but close) to new knowledge – use of analogy to make new concepts seem familiar more quickly.
Sort of about identifying patterns which could be useful in problem solving by showing the learner what information they need to access to deal with a new situation that may resemble something they already know.
More about how to learn than how to teach.
“Knowledge acquisition is described as a mental activity that entails internal coding and structuring by the learner. The learner is viewed as a very active participant in the learning process” – I have to say here that this strikes me as the way that knowledge is acquired under any system – even behaviourism. This kind of statement assumes that in a behaviourist model (where it is implied that knowledge is simply branded onto the brain through sheer repetition) the learner doesn’t make any effort to apply their own meaning to the instruction/information being imparted and that they don’t relate it to other things that they have learnt. This process may not be built into the learning experience by the teacher but I would be surprised if it didn’t happen in the learner regardless.
Cognitivism, like behaviourism, emphasises the role that environmental conditions play in facilitating learning. Instructional explanations, demonstrations, illustrative examples and matched non-examples are all considered to be instrumental in guiding student learning. Similarly, emphasis is placed on the role of practice with corrective feedback.
Cognitive theories contend that environmental “cues” and instructional components alone cannot account for all the learning that results from an instructional situation. Additional key elements include the way that learners attend to, code, transform, rehearse, store and retrieve information. Learners’ thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and values are also considered to be valuable in the learning process.
Learning results when information is stored in the memory in an organised, meaningful manner. Teachers/designers are responsible for assisting learners in organising that information in some optimal way. Designers use techniques such as advance organisers, analogies, hierarchical relationships and matrices to help learners relate new information to prior knowledge. - This seems to say that the brain is a big filing cabinet and it’s easier to find something when it’s organised alphabetically. If teachers present information in a way that is structured differently to the behaviourist approach of simply dealing with the facts, are they simply presenting more facts or are they facilitating greater understanding? I guess if it is able to create more meaning for the learner, then it will be more memorable.
Transfer in Cognitivism works in the same way as in Behaviourism – “when a learner understands how to apply knowledge in different contexts, then transfer has occurred.”
“Specific instructional or real-world events will trigger particular responses but the learner must believe that the knowledge is useful in a given situation before he will activate it” – This is just a matter of knowing what you know and why it is useful. It’s about being able to create associations with existing knowledge and new input.
Cognitive theories are usually considered more appropriate for explaining complex forms of learning (reasoning, problem-solving, information processing) than are those of a more behavioural perspective.
Two techniques used by both camps in achieving this effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge transfer are simplification and standardisation. That is, knowledge can be analysed, decomposed and simplified into basic building blocks. Knowledge transfer is expedited if irrelevant information is eliminated. Well duh.
Behaviourists would focus on the design of the environment to optimise that transfer while cognitivists would stress efficient processing strategies.
So essentially, cognitivists teach study skills or they present cues that are more psychologically oriented to understanding. (Taking understanding to equal knowledge that a learner can ascribe personal meaning to)
The actions undertaken by the teacher or instructional designer seem to be the same (aside from the emphasis given to creating links to prior knowledge) , it’s mainly the language that has changed. Behaviourism revolves around the teacher, cognitivism revolves around the learner.
Both use feedback – B’s for “reinforcement”, C’s to “guide and support mental connections”.
Both use learner/task analysis – B’s to see what the learner already knows (and thus where to begin) and what “reinforcers should be most effective”. C’s to determine the learners predisposition to learning and how to design the most effective learning experience.
I guess the cognitivist approach in this case seems a more compassionate one however ultimately they both dumb down or ramp up the material depending on the learners capacities.
Techiques in the Cognitivist approach
- Emphasis on the active involvement of the learner in the learning process [learner control, metacognitive training (e.g. self-planning, monitoring and revising techniques)]
- Use of hierarchical analyses to identify and illustrate prerequisite relationships [cognitive task analysis procedures]
- Emphasis on structuring, organising and sequencing information to facilitate optimal processing [use of cognitive strategies such as outlining, summaries, synthesisers, advance organisers]
- Creation of learning environments that allow and encourage students to make connections with previously learned material [ recall of prerequisite skills, use of relevant examples, analogies]
Cognitivism seems to be more about making knowledge more meaningful by helping learners link it to existing knowledge. Learning needs to be more tailored to the learners needs and abilities. Use of analogies and metaphors is one cognitive strategy. Other cognitive strategies include the use of framing, mnemonics, concept mapping, advance organisers and so forth.
If the teacher does the work in shaping the information so that it is more easily absorbed by the learner, the learner still seems like a fairly passive participant in this process, just a better taught one.
Let’s see if the Constructivist approach brings the learner into the process any more.
Constructivism
Knowledge “is a function of how the individual creates meaning from his or her experiences”
I’m not sure that I understand how knowledge can be a function – this implies a process rather than an outcome or something relatively concrete. Knowledge of something can evolve over time as contexts change but ultimately it seems like something that is fixed.
Most cognitive psychologists think of the mind as a reference tool to the real world; constructivists believe that the mind filters input from the world to produce it’s own unique reality.
Is this to suggest that cognitivists take a near solipsistic view of the world and assume that all knowledge is already held in the mind? My understanding of cognitivism from the earlier part of the article suggests nothing of the sort.
The evolution of educational philosophies here seems at best to be that greater attention is paid to the (probably ever-present) ability of the learner to filter received information and process it.
I get the distinct impression that the people putting forward one theory/philosophy tend to misrepresent that which came before in an attempt to make the new seem more enlightened and progressive. (Or it could just be the authors of this article and/or the people that they are referencing).
Of course people apply their own experiences to data that they take in and of course they make links to other similar knowledge that they have in the course of giving it meaning, which is unavoidably personal. Encouraging and stimulating this is a sound method for encouraging learning but it’s hardly been invented in the last 20 years.
Constructivists do not share with cognitivists and behaviourists the belief that knowledge is mind-independent and can be “mapped” onto a learner. Constructivists do not deny the existence of the real world but contend that what we know of the world stems from our own interpretations of our experiences. Humans create meaning as opposed to acquiring it. Since there are many possible meanings to acquire from any experience, we cannot achieve a predetermined “correct”meaning.
Again, I’m not sure that this fairly represents the views of behaviourists or cognitivists at all. Cs and Bs from my reading focus on methods of delivering instruction, not the philosophical vagueries of whether something exists because one person has had a different experience of it to another. A nutritionist sees a banana as a source of potassium, a creationist as evidence of God and a farmer as a source of income but none will deny that it is a piece of fruit. (But maybe this is a difference between meaning and truth/facts – I think meaning shapes a view of truth but can’t change it and just because something thinks something is so, doesn’t mean it is.)
Knowledge emerges in contexts within which it is relevant.
Fair enough.
Constructivists argue that knowledge is situationally determined (Jonassen, 1991a) Just as the learning of new vocabulary words is enhanced by exposure and subsequent interaction with those words in context (as opposed to learning their meanings from a dictionary), likewise it is essential that content knowledge be embedded in the situation in which it is used.
Again, makes a lot of sense
(I wonder if my work in the fact based, highly practically oriented VET sector is colouring my views on these philosophies to a degree. Some of this particularly meta stuff seems interesting but irrelevant at times). This bit is good though.
Just as shades of meaning of given words are constantly changing a learner’s “current” understanding of a word, so too will concepts continually evolve with each new use.
Again, in the VET sector this seems a little overstated. Things seem a little more static here. I see what they mean though.
For this reason, it is critical that learning occur in realistic settings and that the selected learning tasks be relevant to the student’s lived experience.
The goal of instruction is not to ensure that students know particular facts but rather that they elaborate on and interpret information.
This type of learning serves a different purpose to that in a behavioural model.
I’m finding that I’m quoting a lot more from this section of the article as it’s hard to summarise what the constructivists are about. Knowledge seems to be a dirty word though.
Representations of experiences are not formalised or structured into a single piece of declarative knowledge and then stored in the head. The emphasis is not on retrieving intact knowledge but on providing learners with the means to creat novel and situation-specific understandings by “assembling” prior knowledge from diverse sources appropriate to the problem at hand.
Isn’t this just association by another – ridiculously long – name? Taking a range of information that you have processed and added meaning to and applying it in a different situation. (After all, in any theory, you aren’t going to take prior knowledge from inappropriate sources, are you. )
I’m starting to actually appreciate heuristics now – any idea that you can’t express clearly in a handful of words is starting to feel like padding and technocrat-ese.
Constructivists emphasise the flexible use of pre-existing knowledge rather than the recall of pre-packaged schemas
Ok good, so it encourages problem solving – but doesn’t cognitivism
The point seems to be that constructivism offers an approach which is more about context than any system before.
There is no need for the mere acquisition of fixed, abstract, self-contained concepts or details. To be successful, meaningful and lasting, learning must include all three of these crucial factors : activity (practice), concept (knowledge) and culture (context). (Brown et al. 1989)
But I thought that “experiences are not… structured into a single piece of declarative knowledge and then stored in the head”?. And doesn’t the behaviourist and cognitivist approach make use of activity(practice) in reinforcement?
Context seems to be the big revelation of constructivism. (A worthwhile addition to the previous theories but not awe-inspiring).
Something else about the discussion of constructivism so far – I’m yet to see a single concrete example of how this is applied in the learning environment – but I’ll read on now.
Now I consider myself a good progressive lefty but the more I read about the underlying philosophy of constructivism, the more I am reminded of the words of Cartman, E (2001) – “It’s all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy crap”. There’s nothing new here that isn’t simple commonsense and there is a lot of touchy-feely-nobody -can-be-wrong-because-everyones-opinion-is-valid-but-come-assessment-time-this-is-out-the-window bullshit. (I like blogging, there is no way I could say this in an essay)
I’m also thinking of heuristics as I’m going here – my favourite so far is Constructivism is a bunch of tree hugging hippy crap.
Can you tell that it’s late and I”m getting tired – I’m sure that at the heart of the constructivist philosophy are some valuable and useful insights but the language surrounding it is horrendously obtuse, ideologically driven and seemingly irrelevant to the needs of actual learners.
The constructivist position assumes that transfer can be facilitated by involvement in authentic tasks anchored in meaningful contexts.
Yes, the context in which learning occurs adds to the learners ability to bring their other experiences to the fore in creating associations which help them to understand the things that they are being taught. (Oh, shouldn’t say taught, I think the point of constructivism is to remove teachers from the context entirely). This seems to be the only new thing so far.
Ooh, got another one – Hulk inspired this time. Constructivism make Col mad – Col smash.
Ok, this seems to be the crux of it all – the goal of instruction is to accurately portray tasks, not to define the structure of learning required to achieve a task
“introductory knowledge acquisition is better supported by more objectivistic approaches (behavioural and/or cognitive) but suggests a transition to constructivistic approaches as learners acquire more knowledge which provides them with the conceptual power needed to deal with complex and ill-structured problems”
Ok, now we are getting somewhere. It’s more about working at a higher level , not learning about things but learning how to apply the things that you would already know in the course of doing a particular job – say working as an Instructional Designer.
“For example, a typical constructivist’s goal would not be to teach novice I.D. students straight facts about Instructional Design but to prepare students to use ID facts as an ID might use them. As such, performance objectives are not related so much to the content as they are to the processes of construction.”
Ok, so that sheds new light on that other article I was – uh – less flattering about. The Tse-Kian one. Still, the whole emphasis on the use of multimedia there seemed way off track and I stand by that.
“Some of the specific strategies utilised by constructivists include situating tasks in real world contexts, use of cognitive apprenticeships (modeling and coaching a student toward expert performance), presentation of multiple perspectives (collaborative learning to develop and share alternative views), social negotiation (debate, discussion, evidence-giving), use of examples as real “slices of life”, reflective awareness and providing considerable guidance on the use of constructive processes”
The following are several specific assumptions or principles from the constructivist position that have direct relevance for the I.D
- An emphasis on the identification of the context in which the skills will be learned and subsequently applied [anchoring learning in meaningful contexts]
- An emphasis on learner control and the capability of the learner to manipulate information [actively using what is learnt]
- The need for information to be presented in a variety of different ways [revisiting content at different times, in rearranged contexts, for different purposes and from different conceptual perspectives]
- Supporting the use of problem-solving skills that allow learners to go “beyond the information given” [developing pattern-recognition skills, presenting alternative ways of representing problems]
- Assessment focused on the transfer of knowledge and skills [presenting new problems and situations that differ from the conditions of the initial instruction]
Ok,this is all making a lot more sense now. I guess the problem with summing up peoples opinions about a new field that they are quite invested in is that they will tend to couch the discussion in far more ideological and evangelical terms than others.
As one moves along the behaviourist-cognitivist-constructivist continuum, the focus of instruction shifts from teaching to learning, form the passive transfer of facts and routines to the active application of ideas to problems.
Meaning is created by the learner: learning objectives are not pre-specified nor is instruction pre-designed.
Are you sure this isn’t just a high-falutin way for teachers to get out of delivering instruction? 
All that said, I think teachers still have a strong responsibility to facilitate this learning by providing adequate and timely support and feedback.
Ah, just like it says here I guess
Here the task of the designer are two-fold: 1) to instruct the student on how to construct meaning, as well as how to effectively monitor, evaluate and update those constructions; and 2) to align and design experiences for the learner so that authentic, relevant contexts can be experienced.
Ok, so in a nutshell – this is probably closer to an actual, usable heuristic – constructivist learning is contextually problem based. It’s all about already having a base level of knowledge and being put in a real world situation with a job to do where you have to work out how to use what you know and how to learn what you don’t know but need to finish it.
Not so hard after all.
Overall then,
What might be most effective for novice learners encountering a complex body of knowledge for the first time, would not be effective, efficient or stimulating for a learner who is more familiar with the content. Typically, one does not teach facts the same way that concepts or problem-solving are taught; likewise one teaches differently depending on the proficiency level of the learners involved.
(Holy crap – just did a quick word count – this weighs in at 3733 so far – no wonder it’s taken a while – I think I need to do this differently. Still, I feel like I’ve learnt a lot from this)
A behavioural approach can effectively facilitate mastery of the content of a profession (knowing what); cognitive strategies are useful in teaching problem-solving tactics where defined facts and rules are applied in unfamiliar situations (knowing how); and constructivist strategies are especially suited to dealing with ill-defined problems through reflection-in-action.
Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place.
Tasks requiring a low level of processing (eg basic paired associations, discriminations, rote memorisation) seem to be facilitated by… a behavioural outlook (eg stimulus-response, contiguity of feedback/response)
Tasks requiring an increased level of processing (eg classifications, rule or procedural executions) … have a stronger cognitive emphasis (eg schematic organisation, analogical reasoning, algorithmic problem solving)
Tasks demanding high levels of processing (eg heuristic problem solving, personal selection and monitoring of cognitive strategies) are frequently best learned with … the constructivist perspective (eg situated learning, cognitive apprenticeships, social negotiation)
The approach of cherry-picking the best strategies from the three, based on the complexity of the task and the knowledge level of the learners is known as “systematic eclecticism”
OK, that’s it.
Great article guys – some of the constructivism stuff drove me nuts but we got there in the end. (Maybe a few small case-studies might have been nice but that’s just me)
March 23rd, 2007
