Constructivism (philosophy of education)
Constructivism in learning psychology terms postulated that human experience and learning design processes is subjected to be influenced by sensory-physiological, neural, cognitive and social processes. His core thesis is that learners create an individual representation of the world in the learning process. What someone learns, under certain conditions, thus does not depend strongly, but excluding, from the learners themselves and from his experience.
Conceptual delimitation
Constructivism in learning psychologically examined sections of a phenomenon, which are also being studied by the epistemological and ontological theories. However, while the epistemological and ontological theories try to clarify the existence of an empirical level (ontology ) or the relations between empirical level and theory level, the psychology of learning constructivism attempts to understand cognitive design processes in order to make them useful for learning processes and the design of learning environments.
Due to a strong conceptual proximity between the psychological learning Constructivism and the ontological or epistemological constructivism, it very often leads to the erroneous assertion that the learning psychological constructivism is necessarily derive from the epistemological constructivism. However, this can be regarded as untenable, as for example, an epistemological realism is not in contradiction to the findings of cognitive design processes. To a physicist, for example, an epistemological realism represented (there is a real, existing empirical level and we are able to make reliable statements about this, because there are valid relationships between the empirical level and our ( cognitive ) models) and agree at the same time that all our perceptions are constructions. This apparent contradiction is resolved on the side of knowledge and philosophy of science, but also in natural science didactics as a field of application of learning psychology, among others, by the model based view and corresponding with him semantic view and the underlying epistemological concepts of Ronald Giere.
Interactionist constructivism
Kersten Reich, who represents an interactive constructivism, describes this in his approach as
- Reconstructing ( Discover of world)
- Constructing ( inventing the world) and
- Deconstruct (criticizing the world).
The interactionist constructivism argues that this re-, de-and construction is always linked to the actions of the learners. Here, the subjective own share of the learners interact with the socio-cultural learning environment. In the spirit of constructive side of learning is most effective when learners can control their learning process itself comprehensively. Everyone knows by this theory for yourself how they can learn effectively. However, this knowledge presupposes a methodological skills that must be acquired only in longer learning processes. For this purpose, particularly the phänomenografische approach by Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson is suitable, which can make up these learning processes already in the nursery and kindergarten age transparent and therefore comprehensible and applicable.
The constructivist learning theory of interactive constructivism advocates for particular forms of learning in which the teacher is not merely imparting knowledge, but rather a " learning consultants ". The teacher should keep in constructive methods more in the background, create learning opportunities, knowledge sources, such as the Internet provide, and watch the learning process. Students should solidify " cultural techniques " in open learning situations and also constructed knowledge to these abstract or it can. The goal is to reach higher knowledge.
For an interactionist -constructivist teaching and learning theory, there are now numerous examples, especially in the English-speaking world. In the German -speaking world, the interactionist -constructivist learning theory is developed wide next to the school, especially in adult education and training. Relevant entries are found in Kersten Reich, Rolf Arnold and Horst Siebert.
Other learning theories are, for example,
- Instruktionalismus,
- Behaviorism and
- Cognitivism
Input into the teaching methodology
Maria Montessori has established by his own teaching and publication record, a new teaching method ( Montessori method ). But whether such progressive educational methods as they were developed at Petersen or Freinet, correspond to the constructivism, is more than doubtful. The progressive education has in regard to the knowledge construction is not as nuanced picture of learning processes such constructivist approaches. Already Jean Piaget, John Dewey and Lev Semenovich Vygotsky go far beyond the reform- pedagogical approaches.
Since the end of the twentieth century constructivism finds wide entrance in the methodological discussion. In Germany, a conversion process takes place away from instructionist towards constructivist practice in all types of schools and subjects.
A modern constructivist method that learns special attention in Germany as part of the school reform, is learning by teaching. In this method, the student group is the " neural network " redesigned with the task of constructing knowledge collectively.
Very well known are now the more moderate constructivist approaches, although the term is misleading. This refers to approaches that are more powerful than radical constructivism based on the socio-cultural contexts and thus have tended to elements of Erlanger constructivism. This includes the German-speaking world, especially Kersten Reich with its constructivist didactics, are shown in the very broad and learning theories. Other applications will constructivism in e -learning context. Here e -Learning systems ( ELS ) are often used to give students the opportunity to search many sources of information and to solve problems with the assistance of various tools. The theory on this is called also situated learning.