Martin Owen (t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk)
Wed, 2 Jun 1999 16:48:19 +0000
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 16:48:19 +0000 From: Martin Owen <t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Constructivism
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I think constructivism's orgins long predate Papert. There are distinct
threads of "radical constructivism" that has a history with Piaget,
Bateson, Maturana ( in the concept of autopoeisis in particular) and Von
Glazerfeld. Seymour Papert spent some time in Geneve in Piaget's
laboatory.
"Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself" (Piaget 1937: 311).
A good place to get an overview of this approach is:
http://www.univie.ac.at/cognition/constructivism/index.htm
Another approach comes from the optomotrist Adelbert Ames whose experiments
on perception influenced Kelly, who went on to elaborate a personal
construct theory. The book Principles of Personal Construct Psychology (New
York: Norton, 1955) has been very infuential. Those of us who were teaching
in the 70's may remember Postman and Weingarten's (???) "Schooling as a
Subversive Activity", which borrowed heavily from Ames and Kelly in their
thesis.
A good site for this work is: http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/PCP/PCP.html
A third thread in the story is the development of social constructivism,
which stems from the work of Soviet psychologists earlier this century,
notably Vygotsky and Ilontj'v. A good introduction to this work is a book I
have recommended on this list before "Distributed Cognition" Ed G Soloman
CUP 1993.
This tradition is continued by those interested in situated cognition and
activity theory. The work of Jean Lave, Wenger, Engestrom, Coles and
Wertsch are seminal in this field.
A good siteto start is:
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/activity.html
Anyone who would like to have an interesting read on comparing cognitivist
vs cultural approaches would do well to read Jerom Bruner's "The Culture of
Education". Clearly Bruner has a long history as a congnitivist, and in
this volume he tries to reconcile his earlier ideas with the emergent
"cultural psychology"
Lastly, I continue to be unsure of contributors who suggest
"Constructivism" as a method... when it is a theory. Any teaching method
is "constructivist" if you adopt the point of view that constructivism is
the way humans come to know. We can attempt to be a little prescriptive in
structuring our learning environment, but we must not make too many
assumptions. There have been so many good arguments against systems
approaches based on behaviourist views of human learning, I leave them for
the reader to find.
Martin
Martin Owen
T.M.Owen@bangor.ac.uk
School of Education Yr Ysgol Addysg
University of Wales, Bangor Prifysgol Cymru, Bangor
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