Social constructivist perspectives on teaching and learning
01 Jan 1998-Annual Review of Psychology (Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way, P.O. Box 10139, Palo Alto, CA 94303-0139, USA)-Vol. 49, Iss: 1, pp 345-375
TL;DR: Social constructivist perspectives focus on the interdependence of social and individual processes in the co-construction of knowledge and their application to selected contemporary issues, including: acquiring expertise across domains, assessment, educational equity, and educational reform are discussed.
Abstract: Social constructivist perspectives focus on the interdependence of social and individual processes in the co-construction of knowledge. After the impetus for understanding the influence of social and cultural factors on cognition is reviewed, mechanisms hypothesized to account for learning from this perspective are identified, drawing from Piagetian and Vygotskian accounts. The empirical research reviewed illustrates (a) the application of institutional analyses to investigate schooling as a cultural process, (b) the application of interpersonal analyses to examine how interactions promote cognition and learning, and (c) discursive analyses examining and manipulating the patterns and opportunities in instructional conversation. The review concludes with a discussion of the application of this perspective to selected contemporary issues, including: acquiring expertise across domains, assessment, educational equity, and educational reform.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the research on formative assessment and feedback is reinterpreted to show how these processes can help students take control of their own learning, i.e. become self-regulated learners.
Abstract: The research on formative assessment and feedback is reinterpreted to show how these processes can help students take control of their own learning, i.e. become self-regulated learners. This reformulation is used to identify seven principles of good feedback practice that support self-regulation. A key argument is that students are already assessing their own work and generating their own feedback, and that higher education should build on this ability. The research underpinning each feedback principle is presented, and some examples of easy-to-implement feedback strategies are briefly described. This shift in focus, whereby students are seen as having a proactive rather than a reactive role in generating and using feedback, has profound implications for the way in which teachers organise assessments and support learning.
4,204 citations
Cites result from "Social constructivist perspectives ..."
...This is consistent with the literature on student-centred and social constructivist conceptio ns of learning (Lea, Stephenson & Troy, 2003; Palinscar, 1998 )....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that problem-based learning (PBL) and inquiry learning (IL) are powerful and effective models of learning and that they employ scaffolding extensively, thereby reducing the cognitive load and allowing students to learn in complex domains.
Abstract: Many innovative approaches to education such as problem-based learning (PBL) and inquiry learning (IL) situate learning in problem-solving or investigations of complex phenomena. Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) grouped these approaches together with unguided discovery learning. However, the problem with their line of argument is that IL and PBL approaches are highly scaffolded. In this article, we first demonstrate that Kirschner et al. have mistakenly conflated PBL and IL with discovery learning. We then present evidence demonstrating that PBL and IL are powerful and effective models of learning. Far from being contrary to many of the principles of guided learning that Kirschner et al. discussed, both PBL and IL employ scaffolding extensively thereby reducing the cognitive load and allowing students to learn in complex domains. Moreover, these approaches to learning address important goals of education that include content knowledge, epistemic practices, and soft skills such as collaboration and sel...
2,040 citations
Cites background from "Social constructivist perspectives ..."
...Constructivist theories of learning stress the importance of learners being engaged in constructing their own knowledge (Mayer, 2004; Palincsar, 1998)....
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TL;DR: Teachers and students reported that the technology-mediated narrative and the interactive, situated, collaborative problem solving affordances of the AR simulation were highly engaging, especially among students who had previously presented behavioral and academic challenges for the teachers.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to document how teachers and students describe and comprehend the ways in which participating in an augmented reality (AR) simulation aids or hinders teaching and learning. Like the multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) interface that underlies Internet games, AR is a good medium for immersive collaborative simulation, but has different strengths and limitations than MUVEs. Within a design-based research project, the researchers conducted multiple qualitative case studies across two middle schools (6th and 7th grade) and one high school (10th grade) in the northeastern United States to document the affordances and limitations of AR simulations from the student and teacher perspective. The researchers collected data through formal and informal interviews, direct observations, web site posts, and site documents. Teachers and students reported that the technology-mediated narrative and the interactive, situated, collaborative problem solving affordances of the AR simulation were highly engaging, especially among students who had previously presented behavioral and academic challenges for the teachers. However, while the AR simulation provided potentially transformative added value, it simultaneously presented unique technological, managerial, and cognitive challenges to teaching and learning.
1,069 citations
TL;DR: The authors presents a theoretical analysis of constructivism in practice by building a framework of dilemmas that explicates the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural, and political planes of the constructivist teaching experience.
Abstract: Classroom teachers are finding the implementation of constructivist instruction far more difficult than the reform community acknowledges. This article presents a theoretical analysis of constructivism in practice by building a framework of dilemmas that explicates the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural, and political planes of the constructivist teaching experience. In this context, “constructivism in practice” is a concept situated in the ambiguities, tensions, and compromises that arise among stakeholders in the educational enterprise as constructivism is used as a basis for teaching. In addition to providing a unique theoretical perspective for researchers, the framework is a heuristic for teachers, providing critical questions that allow them to interrogate their own beliefs, question institutional routines, and understand more deeply the forces that influence their classroom practice
1,043 citations
Cites background from "Social constructivist perspectives ..."
...Specifically, talk that is interpretive—generated in the service of analysis or explanations—is associated with more significant learning gains than talk that is merely descriptive (Palincsar, 1998)....
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TL;DR: The study found that three general factors – clarity of design, interaction with instructors, and active discussion among course participants – significantly influenced students’ satisfaction and perceived learning.
Abstract: This paper looks at factors affecting student satisfaction with and perceived learning from asynchronous online learning. It reports on an empirical investigation that explored relationships between student perceptions and course design factors in seventythree SUNY Learning Network courses in the spring, 1999 semester. The study found that three, and only three, general factors – clarity of design, interaction with instructors, and active discussion among course participants –significantly influenced students’ satisfaction and perceived learning. Such findings are related to various kinds of interactivity and a “community of inquiry” model of online learning.
941 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: This work has shown that legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice is not confined to midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, non-drinking alcoholics and the like.
Abstract: In this important theoretical treatist, Jean Lave, anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, computer scientist, push forward the notion of situated learning - that learning is fundamentally a social process. The authors maintain that learning viewed as situated activity has as its central defining characteristic a process they call legitimate peripheral participation (LPP). Learners participate in communities of practitioners, moving toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community. LPP provides a way to speak about crucial relations between newcomers and old-timers and about their activities, identities, artefacts, knowledge and practice. The communities discussed in the book are midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, and recovering alcoholics, however, the process by which participants in those communities learn can be generalised to other social groups.
43,846 citations
"Social constructivist perspectives ..." refers background in this paper
...In contrast, from social constructivist perspectives, expertise is characterized not in terms of knowledge structures but rather in terms of facility with discourse, norms, and practices associated with particular communities of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991)....
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Book•
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01 Jan 1962
TL;DR: Kozulin has created a new edition of the original MIT Press translation by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar that restores the work's complete text and adds materials that will help readers better understand Vygotsky's meaning and intentions as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Since it was introduced to the English-speaking world in 1962, Lev Vygotsky's highly original exploration of human mental development has become recognized as a classic foundational work of cognitive science. Vygotsky analyzes the relationship between words and consciousness, arguing that speech is social in its origins and that only as children develop does it become internalized verbal thought.Now Alex Kozulin has created a new edition of the original MIT Press translation by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar that restores the work's complete text and adds materials that will help readers better understand Vygotsky's meaning and intentions. Kozulin has also contributed an introductory essay that offers new insight into the author's life, intellectual milieu, and research methods.Lev S. Vygotsky (1896-1934) studied at Moscow University and acquired in his brief lifespan a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the social sciences, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, literature, and the arts. He began his systematic work in psychology at the age of 28, and within a few years formulated his theory of the development of specifically human higher mental functions. He died of tuberculosis ten years later, and Thought and Language was published posthumously in 1934.Alex Kozulin studied at the Moscow Institute of Medicine and the Moscow Institute of Psychology, where he began his investigation of Vygotsky and the history of Soviet psychology. He emigrated in 1979 and is now Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology) at Boston University. He is the author of Psychology in Utopia: Toward a Social History of Soviet Psychology (MIT Press 1984).
19,246 citations
TL;DR: In this article, two instructional studies directed at the comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities of seventh grade poor comprehenders are reported, and the training method was that of reciprocal teaching, where the tutor and students took turns leading a dialogue centered on pertinent features of the text.
Abstract: Two instructional studies directed at the comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities of seventh grade poor comprehenders are reported. The four study activities were summarizing (self-review), questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The training method was that of reciprocal teaching, where the tutor and students took turns leading a dialogue centered on pertinent features of the text. In Study 1, a comparison between the reciprocal teaching method and a second intervention modeled on typical classroom practice resulted in greater gains and maintenance over time for the reciprocal procedure. Reciprocal teaching, with an adult model guiding the student to interact with the text in more sophisticated ways, led to a significant improvement in the quality of the summaries and questions. It also led to sizable gains on criterion tests of comprehension, reliable maintenance over time, generalization to classroom comprehension tests, transfer to novel tasks that tapped the trained skills of...
5,127 citations
"Social constructivist perspectives ..." refers background in this paper
...For example, heterogeneous groups of children with diverse comprehension skills attained competence by using the learning dialogues more quickly than groups of more homogenous ability (Palincsar & Brown 1984)....
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Book•
03 Apr 1996TL;DR: A theory of discourses: discourses and literacies - two theorems individuals, acts and discourses - humans in the act of making and being made by their discourses.
Abstract: Part 1 Background: ideology and theory - the moral basis of discourse analysis literacy - from Plato to Freire background to the "new literacy studies". Part 2 Introduction to sociolinguistics: language and meaning - humans as choosers and guessers discourses and society - language caught up in the social world. Part 3 A theory of discourses: discourses and literacies - two theorems individuals, acts and discourses - humans in the act of making and being made by their discourses.
4,600 citations