1 7. CONSTRUCTIVISM: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE DESIGN AND DELIVERY OF INSTRUCTION Thomas M. Duffy Donald J. Cunningham INDIANA UNIVERSITY Instruction should be designed to support a dialogue between the child and his or her future; not a dialogue between the child and the adult’s history. Adult wisdom does not provide a teleology for child development. - Adapted from Griffin and Cole’s discussion (1984) of the zone of proximal development. 7.1INTRODUCTION 1 Constructivism! The increase in frequency with which need to be dressed up to attract attention. No one really cares this word appears in the discourse of educational research, whether PacMan gobbles up all those little spots on the theory, and policy is truly remarkable. Unfortunately much screen. What is reinforcing is successful play, and in a well-designed instructional program students gobble up their of the discussion is at the level of slogan and c1iche, even assignments (1984, p. 949). bromide. “Students should construct their own knowledge” is being reverentially chanted throughout the halls of many Skinner goes on to describe a classroom in which the a school/college/department of education these days, and any students are so volubly engaged with the instruction on their approach that is other than constructivist is characterized as “teaching machine” that they don’t even look up when the promoting passive, rote, and sterile learning. For example, teacher makes distracting noises by jumping up and down consider Rogoff’s (1994) description of what she calls the on the teacher’s platform at the front of the room. adult-run model of how learning occurs: It may be time to move beyond the paradigm debates of .. learning is seen as a product of teaching or of adults’ the last few years for precisely the reason that the tendency provision of information. Adults see themselves as to sort the various approaches into “Good Guys” and “Bad responsible for filling children up with knowledge, as if Guys” (Cunningham, 1986) has not led in profitable direc- children are receptacles and knowledge is a product... tions. Skinner and his advocates see themselves as virtuous [The] children are seen as receivers of a body of as any constructivist (see 2.5.2)! The debates have focused knowledge, but not active participants in learning. The on method, as in whether we should use a problem-based children have little role except to be receptive, as if method, or cooperative groups, or hypermedia databases, or they could just open a little bottle cap to let adults pour programmed instruction, etc. For some, the paradigm issue the knowledge in. In this adult-run model, adults have has reached the status of the utterly irrelevant; we should to be concerned with how to package the knowledge ignore theoretical issues and simply pick the methods that and how to motivate the children to work, that reliably and efficiently lead to student learning. make themselves receptive (p. 211). What we see as crucial in these debates, however, is We wonder how many, if any, educators would recog- scarcely acknowledged: a fundamental difference in world nize themselves in this description.2 Perhaps the propo- view, disagreement at the level of grounding assumptions, nents of programmed instruction? Skinner would certainly the fundamental assumptions underlying our conception of reject the aspersion: the teaching-learning process. It must be recognized that A good program of instruction guarantees a great deal of grounding assumptions are always assumed, that they can successful action. Students do not need to have a natural never be proved unambiguously true or false. We may and interest in what they are doing, and subject matters do not certainly will provide evidence and try to persuade you that our assumptions are reasonable and those to which you should commit. An important part of our argument will be that these 1 The development of this paper was supported in part through T. M. Duffy’s contract with the North Central Regional Education Laboratory. The views expressed in this paper, however, do not necessarily reflect the views of the 2 Modesty prevents us from mentioning our own tendency Laboratory. toward this sort of hyperbole! 2 - I. Foundations for Research in Educational Communications and Technology assumptions lead to demonstrably different goals, strategies, knowledge, understanding, explanation, or other action, not and embodiments of instruction, even when there are some by reference to the extent to which it matches reality but, superficial similarities to instruction derived from different rather, by testing the extent to which it provides a viable, assumptions. workable, acceptable action relative to potential alternatives. As Bruner has noted, asking the question “How does this An immediate difficulty confronts us, however. The term view affect my view of the world or my commitments to it, constructivism has come to serve as an umbrella term for a surely does not lead to ‘anything goes.’ It may lead to an wide diversity of views. It is well beyond our purposes in unpacking of suppositions, the better to explore one’s com- this chapter to detail these similarities and differences across mitments” (1990, p. 27). the many theories claiming some kinship to constructivism. However, they do seem to be committed to the general view A second concern has been that the idiosyncrasies of con- that (1) learning is an active process of constructing rather structions lead to an inability to communicate. That is, how than acquiring knowledge, and (2) instruction is a process of can we possibly talk to one another if our world construc- supporting that construction rather than communicating tions (meanings) are idiosyncratic based on our experience. knowledge. The differences, some quite pronounced, are in Indeed, the lack of shared meaning can make communica- definitions of such terms as knowledge, learning, and con- tion very difficult for two people from very different cul- struction, and about the processes appropriate for support- tures. Simple language translations do not do the trick; rather ing learning. For example, within Rogoff’s (1994) distinc- we must develop cultural understandings before we can com- tion between three instructional approaches—( 1) adult-run municate adequately, a lesson the business community has (transmission from experts to novices), (2) children-run (in- already learned in this increasingly global economy. For those dividual or collaborative discovery), or (3) community of of us who share a common culture, however, the communi- learners (transformed participation in collective sociocultural cation is not that difficult. Indeed, cultures are defined by a experience) — one can see possibilities of both constructiv- set of common experiences and the agreement of a common ist and nonconstructivist instruction. So, for example, recip- set of values based on those experiences. As Bruner (1990) rocal teaching (e.g., Palinscar & Brown, 1984) is often cited puts it, culture forms minds, and minds make value judg- as a constructivist teaching strategy, yet it is very much ments. teacher led. Similarly, group problem-based learning inter- ventions (Savery & Duffy, 1995) might focus on the indi- But don’t we have shared meaning within the culture? Is vidual achievement of prescribed learning outcomes rather it possible to have shared meaning? We can only evaluate than on any sort of pattern of collective participation. whether meaning is shared by testing the compatibility of our individual meanings: exploring implications, probing As the quote from Skinner suggests, everyone agrees that more deeply. Of course, no matter how much we probe, we learning involves activity and a context, including the avail- can never be sure that the meaning is shared.3 Thus, rather ability of information in some content domain. Traditionally than assuming a shared meaning, within the constructivist in instruction, we have focused on the information presented framework there is a seeking of compatibility, a lack of con- or available for learning and have seen the activity of the tradiction between views (Rorty, 1989). We probe at deeper learner as a vehicle for moving that information into the head. and deeper levels to determine where or if our understand- Hence the activity is a matter of processing the information. ings begin to diverge. There are two important implications The constructivists, however, view the learning as the activ- of this constructivist framework. First, we do not assume ity in context. The situation as a whole must be examined that we must have a common meaning, but rather we ac- and understood in order to understand the learning. Rather tively seek to understand the different perspectives. Second, than the content domain sitting as central, with activity and from a learning perspective, we do not assume that the learner the “rest” of the context serving a supporting role, the entire will “acquire” the expert’s meaning, and hence we do not gestalt is integral to what is learned. seek a transmission approach to instruction. Rather we seek to understand and challenge the learner’s thinking. An implication of this view of learning as constructed in the activity of the learner is that the individual can only know what he or she has constructed—and we cannot “know” in any complete sense of that term what someone else has con- structed. This implication has led to considerable debate 3 among many individuals seeking to understand constructiv- Though we are sure all of our readers have had the ism. In particular we hear the reaction that constructivism experience of wondering whether our conversational partner “really” understands what we are saying. We have this leads inevitably to subjectivism, to a relativism where experience most often in discussing educational theory and anyone’s constructions are as good as any one else’s and concepts. No matter how often our conversational partners where we are unable to judge the value or truth of construc- states that they understand and even make statements tions with any degree of certainty.