Social & Cognitive Constructivism
|
Social & Cognitive
Constructivism
|
||
Cognitive constructivism
Cognitive or Piagetian constructivists generally regard the purpose of education as educating the individual child in a fashion that supports the child's interests and needs; consequently, the child is the subject of study, and individual cognitive development is the emphasis. Learning is primarily an individualistic
enterprise. This is a child-centered approach that seeks to identify, through scientific study, the natural path of cognitive development. This approach assumes that students come to classrooms with ideas, beliefs, and opinions that need to be altered or modified by a teacher who facilitates this alteration by devising tasks and questions that create dilemmas for students.
Knowledge construction occurs as a result of working through these dilemmas. Characteristic instructional practices include "discovery learning" and hands-on activities, such as using manipulatives; student tasks that challenge existing concepts and thinking processes; and questioning techniques that probe students' beliefs and encourage examination and testing of those beliefs. To a large extent, this approach assumes that development is an ingrained, natural, biological process that is pretty much the same for all individuals, regardless of gender, class, race, or the social or cultural context in which learning and living take place. Internal development is the focus of the teaching environment, and the social and historical context, as well as issues of power, authority, and the place of formal knowledge in the learning environment are not emphasized.It is essentially a decontextualized approach to learning and teaching.
social Constructivism
Social or Vygotskian constructivism emphasizes education for social transformation and reflects a theory of human development that situates the individual within a sociocultural context. Individual development derives from social interactions within which cultural meanings are shared by the group and eventually internalized by the individual. Individuals construct knowledge in
transaction with the environment, and in the process both the individual and the environment are changed. The subject of study is the dialectical relationship between the individual and the social and cultural milieu.
Schools are the sociocultural settings where teaching and learning take place and where "cultural tools," such as reading, writing, mathematics, and certain modes of discourse are utilized. This approach assumes that theory and practice do not develop in a vacuum; they are shaped by dominant cultural assumptions. Both formal knowledge, the subject of instruction, and the manner of its presentation are influenced by the historical and cultural environment that generated them. To accomplish the goals of social transformation and reconstruction, the context of education must be deconstructed, and the cultural assumptions, power relationships, and historical influences that undergird it must be exposed, critiqued, and, when necessary, altered.