Constructivism

Constructivism embodies two major perspectives -- cognitive constructivism and social constructivism. Rooted from the work of Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner, the cognitive constructive theory views knowledge as a constructed entity made by learners through a learning process, in which learners must individually and actively explore, discover and transform the complex information to their own. Although focusing on the individual, the constructive perspective doesn't ignore past knowledge and the environments as the important factors for knowledge construction. Constructivist approaches prefer top-down processing to behavioristic bottom-up instruction, which means that students begin with complex problems or tasks and then discover the basic knowledge or skills. Constructivist approaches also emphasize generative learning, cooperative learning, questioning strategies, discovery learning and problem solving, and other learning skills.

Other resources:
http://www.uib.no/people/sinia/CSCL/web_struktur-836.htm
http://the-duke.duq-duke.duq.edu/notes/viz4/overview.htm

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