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RECENTLY, "constructivism" has been receiving a great deal of attention. At the conceptual level, constructivists debate such questions as: What is knowledge? What is teaching? What is learning? Is objectivity possible? At the practical level, these complex issues have, in many cases, been reduced to catch phrases such as "Students construct their own knowledge" or the slightly narrower "Students construct their own knowledge based on their existing schemata and beliefs."
Many efforts are underway to translate constructivist epistemology into classroom practices to enable students to become "constructors of their own knowledge." We wish to sound a cautionary note about the euphoria surrounding constructivism. Constructivism is an epistemology, a philosophical explanation about the nature of knowledge. Although it might provide a model of knowing and learning that could be useful for educational purposes, at present the constructivist model is descriptive, not prescriptive. It describes in the broadest of strokes the human activity of knowing and nowhere specifies the detailed craft of teaching. It is important to understand at the outset that constructivism is not an instructional approach; it is a theory about how learners come to know. Cognitive Process
Constructivism describes how one attains, develops, and uses cognitive processes. In general, constructivists compare an "old" view of knowledge to a "new," constructivist view. In the old view, knowledge is fixed and independent of the knower. There are "truths" that reside outside the knower. Knowledge is the accumulation of the "truths" in a subject area. The more "truths" one acquires, the more knowledge one possesses.
In sharp contrast, the constructivist view says knowledge is produced by the knower from existing beliefs and experiences. All knowledge is constructed and consists of what individuals create and express. Since individuals make their own meaning from their beliefs and experiences, all knowledge is tentative, subjective, and personal. Knowledge is viewed as a set of "working hypotheses." Thus constructivists believe that knowledge can never be justified as "true" in an absolute sense.
Constructivism is based on the fundamental assumption that people create knowledge from the interaction between their existing knowledge or beliefs and the new ideas or situations they encounter. In this sense, most constructivists support the need to foster interactions between students' existing knowledge and new experiences. This emphasis is perceived...