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Learning Theories: Constructivist theory

  Learning Theories

Constructivist theory

The area of constructivism, in the field of learning, comes under the broad heading of cognitive science. Cognitive science is an expansive area. It has its roots in the first half of the twentieth century at a time when academics from the disciplines of psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience and anthropology realised that they were all trying to solve problems concerning the mind and the brain. 

Cognitive science: a definition 

Cognitive scientists study (among other things) how people learn, remember and interact, often with a strong emphasis on mental processes and often with an emphasis on modern tech- nologies. Cognitive science investigates ‘intelligence and intelligent systems, with particular reference to intelligent behaviour’ (Posner 1984). 

Cognitive psychology: a definition 

Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as learning, perceiving, remembering, using language, reasoning and solving problems. 

Constructivism: a definition 

Constructivists view learning as the result of mental construction.That is, learning takes place when new information is built into and added onto an individual’s current structure of knowledge,understandingandskills.Welearnbestwhenweactivelyconstructourownunder- standing. 

The reference in the preceding paragraph to knowledge, understanding and skills refers to 1 what is commonly considered to be a description of the types of learning that we become 2 involved with.These three areas for learning are joined by a fourth and are: 3 

• knowledge 
• concepts
•  skills 7 

                                                                                                                                   9

In the concrete operational stage, children become more able to take another’s point of view 2 and they begin to be able to take into account multiple perspectives. Although they can 3 understand concrete problems, Piaget would argue that they cannot deal effectively with more 4 abstract problems. 5 

At the stage of formal operations, children are capable of thinking logically and in the abstract. 6 Piaget considered this stage to be the ultimate stage of intellectual development, and said that 7 although children were still in a position of having relatively little knowledge, their thought 8 processes were as well developed as they were ever likely to be. 9

Whether Piaget was correct or not, it is safe to say that his theory of cognitive development 40 has had a great influence on all work in the field of developmental psychology. Piaget’s view 41 

■ attitudes (DES 1985). 

It is within these four areas that all learning, in particular school learning, can be placed.We learn factual information; we learn to understand new ideas; we learn skills, both mental and physical; and we learn about, and develop, new attitudes to our environment. 

Piaget 

Jean Piaget, who is considered to be one of the most influential early proponents of a con- structivist approach to understanding learning, is one of the best known psychologists in the field of child development and learning. Many teachers are introduced to what is known as his ‘developmental stage’ theory, which sets out age-related developmental stages.The stages begin with the sensori-motor stage and end with the stage of formal operations.The developmental stage theory is a useful guide to intellectual growth, but modern thought has gone beyond Piaget’s view.Table 3.1 sets out Piaget’s stages. 

During the sensori-motor period, Piaget said that a child’s cognitive system is more or less limited to motor reflexes which are present at birth, such as sucking.The child builds on these reflexes to develop more sophisticated behaviour. Children learn to generalise specific actions and activities to a wider range of situations and make use of them in increasingly complex patterns of behaviour. 

At Piaget’s pre-operational stage, children acquire the ability to represent ideas and to engage
in mental imagery. In particular they do this through the medium of language.They have an egocentric view; that is, they view the world almost exclusively from their own point of view 30 and find it difficult to consider situations from another’s perspective. 1 

For Piaget, learning is a process of adjustment to environmental influences. He describes two basic processes which form this process of adjustment.They are assimilation and accommodation. Piaget’s view is influenced by his background in biology and he sees organisms, including human beings, as constantly seeking to maintain a stability in their existence. A physical example of this would be the maintenance of a constant body temperature. If external conditions change – get hotter, for example – a sophisticated organism will make physical changes in order to 1 maintain stability.The body’s temperature regulation systems come into operation and a constant 2 temperature is held. Piaget’s model for learning is similar. External experiences can have an 3 impact on what is already ‘known’. It could be that a new experience can add to and reinforce 4 ‘knowledge’ that is held or it could contradict existing knowledge. For example, a young child 5 might know that a small creature covered in fur, with four legs and having a tail, is a dog.The 6 more examples of dogs that the child comes across, the more secure this idea becomes. However, 7 a cat is also small, furry and has a tail. New environmental experience – being introduced to 8 a cat – contradicts the currently held knowledge and understanding concerning the definition 9 of a dog. The new information is added to the existing information, and gradually a deeper 10 and broader understanding of creatures with fur and tails is developed. 1

1 

Assimilation is the process whereby new knowledge is incorporated into existing mental 12 structures.The knowledge bank is increased to include new information. 13 Accommodation is the process whereby mental structures have to be altered in order to cope 14 with the new experience which has contradicted the existing model. 15 Equilibration is the process of arriving at a stable state where there is no longer a conflict 16 between new and existing knowledge. 17 A young child is introduced to a large white object in a kitchen and it is explained, 18 simply, that it is hot and should not be touched. The word ‘cooker’ is used and remembered 19 by the child. The child has an evolving mental structure which includes the images and 20 

ideas of a large white object, in a kitchen, the word ‘cooker’ and the idea that it should not 1 be touched.Very soon after this experience, the child may well walk towards the next large 2 white object in the kitchen, actually a fridge, and call out the word ‘cooker’.When corrected 3 by the more knowledgeable adult, a problem arises. The mental model for large white 4 objects in kitchens is incomplete and new experience is creating a contradiction for the child. 5 New information in the form of a simple explanation from a parent will add the new 6 information to the existing model and learning will have taken place.The unstable has been 7 made stable and the child can move on to a future encounter with a dishwasher or a tumble 8 drier. 9 

Piaget’s early work formed the basis of the constructivist movement. In constructivist learning 30 theory, the key idea is that ‘. . . students actively construct their own knowledge: the mind of 1 the student mediates input from the outside world to determine what the student will learn. 2 Learning is active mental work, not passive reception of teaching’ (Woolfolk 1993). 3 

In constructivist learning, individuals draw on their experience of the world around them, 4 in many different forms, and work to make sense of what they perceive in order to build an 5 understanding of what is around them. 6 

Within constructivist theory there are, naturally, different interpretations of the basic ideas 7 of the construction of knowledge and understanding. We will consider some of these 8 interpretations, in particular the notion of mental frameworks which hold items of knowledge 9 in a notional, complex structure, each item having numerous links to other related items, each 40 link defined according to connections and interpretations constructed by the ‘owner’.We will 41 

look at schema theory which gives a model of, and an explanation for, what underpins the complex process of building new knowledge and understanding. 

Schema theory 

Human beings understand the world by constructing models of it in their minds.
(Johnson-Laird 1983) 

Mental models, which have been described and examined by psychologists over many years (Piaget in the 1920s, Bartlett in the 1930s, Schank in the 1970s, Rumelhart in the 1980s, to mentionbutafew),andwhichformthebasisofschematheory,arenowfairlywidelyconsidered as a reasonable way of describing the way that the process of learning unfolds. Johnson-Laird tells us that mental models are the basic structure of cognition:‘It is now plausible to suppose that mental models play a central and unifying role in representing objects, states of affairs, sequences of events, the way the world is, and the social and psychological actions of daily life’ (Johnson-Laird 1983) and we are told by Holland that ‘mental models are the basis for all reasoning processes’ (Holland et al. 1986). 

To look more closely at the idea of a schema, we can describe it as a theoretical multidimensional store for almost innumerable items of knowledge, or as a framework with numerous nodes and even more numerous connections between nodes. At each node, there is a discrete piece of information or an idea.The piece of information can be in any one of a range of different forms – image, sound, smell, feeling and so on. Each node is connected to many others.The connections are made as a result of there being a meaningful link between the connected items.The links are personal, and identical items in the schemas of two different people could easily have very different links made for very different reasons, which could account for individuals having a ‘different understanding’ of a topic or idea. It is the adding of items to schemas and connecting them to other items that constitutes constructivist learning. There is no limit to the size to which a schema might grow.There is no limit to the number of connections within a schema which might be made, and there are no restrictions on how schemas might link and interconnect with other schemas. The more connections there are within and between schemas, the more construction has taken place and the more it is considered that knowledge and understanding has been gained; that is, learning has taken place. 

A schema can exist to represent a physical skill or action. An example of this might be related to handwriting: the correct way to construct a letter, the way in which spaces are created between words. A schema related to throwing a stone or a ball would be activated and then used as a basis for learning how to throw a javelin. The stone-throwing schema would not be directly or fully applicable in the case where a longer, heavier object to throw was to be used, where there are significant differences in style and posture required to be successful. However, a child with a well-developed schema related to throwing a ball or similar object would be able to develop it into a successful schema to use in a variety of ‘throwing’ situations. 

Figure 3.1 (based on Davis 1991) is an attempt to represent a schema, though it must be 1 understood that to draw a schema is essentially impossible.This representation is limited by 2 many factors, space being one.The notional ‘egg’ schema would have numerous links to other 3 schemas, and in itself constitute a tiny subset (or sub-schema) of a more expansive structure. 4 This particular restricted schema would form only a very tiny proportion of the whole 5 knowledge base of an individual. 6 

Prior knowledge has a crucial part to play in constructivist learning. An existing schema 1 represents the sum of an individual’s current state of knowledge and understanding of the 2 particular topic, event, action and so on. New learning concerned with the particular topic will 3 involve the processes of accommodation and assimilation, and the expansion and increase in 4 complexity of the schema in question. For this reason, it is very important that a schema that 5 is to be the focus of these processes in the introduction of a new area of work in school is 6 activated at the outset of a new topic, and reactivated each time the learning is to move on in 7 subsequent lessons. In simple terms, if new learning is to take place, it is a very good idea to 8 review what is already known about the topic in question.The starting point of what is already 9 known and understood is very important if any new learning is to be effective. Schema activation 30 is a process which can be encouraged in classroom situations, and teachers frequently make use 1 of this idea in their work. 2 

3

4 Schema theory: 

a summary 

Cognitive psychologists refer to units of knowledge, understanding and skill as schemas, as a 7 wayofreferringtoconceptualknowledgewhichisstoredinlong-termmemory.Itisestimated 8 that any adult would have hundreds of thousands of schemas in memory, which would be 9 

interrelated in an extremely large and complex number of different ways. New schemas are 40 regularly created and existing schemas are constantly updated.This creating and updating takes 41

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