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Opposing to behaviorism and cognitivism, learning paradigms which begin from a point of view that world external to the learner is objective and real and the learner needs to map it's principles and facts, constructivism as a learning paradigm1) suggests that:
Teaching of a discipline should therefore:
Although constructivist ideas can be tracked back to 18th century and authors like Giambattista Vico2) it mostly emerged in the 1970s3) and has been recognized as a paradigm, but also as a theory4). Today constructivism usually appears in the literature in two main variants5):
Constructivist instructional design models have been subjected to much criticisms lately6)7), mostly for promoting pure discovery-learning and minimally guided instruction. Richard Mayer8) has reviewed results of pure discovery-based learning experiments from 1950s to 1980s and concluded that every decade a new similar approach was invented under different name not making any significant difference. In his own words,
Critics claim discovery-learning and minimally guided instruction:
This results refer especially to novice learners. Learners with prior knowledge and some prior structured experiences can learn successfully through discovery19).
Although constructivism also includes learning methods with a certain degree of guidance and not just discovery learning and minimally guided instruction, critics claim that those methods still ignore proven benefits guidance, worked examples20), and induce a higher cognitive load resulting in lower resources available for learning due to orientation on finding a solution to a problem.
According to John Sweller, inquiry-based instructions put a huge burden on working-memory. Working-memory is during problem-based searching orientated on finding a solution and can not be used for learning. Experimental results confirmed that discovery learning models listed above do not enhance learning an can even have some negative consequences21).
It is important to notice that these findings do not indicate that the initial assumptions of constructivism of a learner constructing his own representation of knowledge are wrong. The indicate that suggested instructional design consequences described in discovery learning models with minimal guidance do not necessarily follow. Today it is generally considered that advantages of guidance during instructional process begin to fade only when learners possess sufficient amount of prior knowledge to provide guidance by themselves22).
Constructivism at Learning Theories. Retrieved March 2, 2011.
Driver, R. Constructivist approaches in science teaching. In L. P. Steffe & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructivism in education (pp. 385-400). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1995.
Duit, R. The constructivist view: A Fashionable and fruitful paradigm for science education research and practice. In L. P. Steffe & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructvism in education (pp. 271-285). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1995.
Tobin, K., & Tippins. D. Constructivism as a referent for teaching and learning. In K. Tobin (Ed.), The practice of constructivism in science education (pp. 3-21). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1993.