Martin Owen (t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk)
Mon, 12 Apr 1999 10:06:47 +0000
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 10:06:47 +0000 From: Martin Owen <t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk> Subject: Constructivism and learning culture
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Constructivism, and its lemmas : social constructivism and situated
cognition, are not theories of teaching. They are models of learning.
There are certain evolving views on the model:
that human learning is culturally situated and interaction with the
"environment" is mediated by culture (particulalry language).
That perception itself is governed by both the culture and pre-history of
the learnier.
That cognition is not uniquely in the head bu t also distributed through
relationships with other humans, the culture, its artefacts
that the learner actively constructs their perceptions based ion their
previous learning and cultural mediation
How should this change my teaching? If I believe any of the above it
matters little if I am a "traditonal" or a "constructivist" teacher, as my
students can only be "constructivist" learners. Can I /Should I do anything
about this?
Most rational systems (traditional ed tech) tend to be reductionst in their
models of knowing and the structure of knowledge.The logic of a discipline
does not always equate with how we "know". A highly structured course on
using Microsoft Word for instance bears very little resemblance to the ways
anybody I know actually acquired their MS Word skills.
The world is complicated, we do need props, support and explanation from
others to help make sense of it. Engineering those things into a complex
world is not any easy challenge and contributors on both sdes of the fence
have things to offer.... but in the end knowing is an active response from
the learner in the environment.
Could Newton have made his discoveries if he had lived 100 years earlier(
ina alltogether different hemeneutic culture)? Why is it 350 years later I
can teach his radical idea in junior high schools?
Al writes:
On the matter of constructivism, I
>have a preference for a variation of "social constructivism" known as
>"situated learning" or "situated cognition". I am attracted to the concept
>of learning being seen as a process of "enculturation" into a "community of
>practice".
There is a contradiction here and a problem with the community of practice
as espoused by Schon. We should not consider the existing culture/practice
unproblematic, and we should work to models which offer problem or crticism
construction as part of the process.
Martin
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