Constructivism and Learning in The Age of Social M
Constructivism and Learning in The Age of Social M
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locate the knower in the traditions, tools, symbols, artifacts, and language
of the learning community. In looking closely at the processes and products
from constructivist and sociocultural constructivist views, they share more
commonalities than divergences.
Piagetian-Based Constructivism. Constructivism traditionally is
considered to focus on how people make meaning of or construct knowl-
edge when interacting with content knowledge and the active processes of
this interaction. This can happen both individually as a single “epistemic
knowing agent”—as Piaget referred to the knower, learner, and constructor
of knowledge—or in a group of peers or more expert others. For Piagetian
constructivists the focus is on the knower and on peer relations, equalizing
power and relationships to create optimal challenge and support for inves-
tigating knowledge. The process of construction of meaning, of learning,
and of knowledge development involves active engagement with the objects
and people in the environment, a sense-making reminiscent of the child as
a philosopher or a scientist (Dewey 1933; Papert 1999; Kohlberg 1968).
James Mark Baldwin’s fundamental conceptualizations of knowledge cre-
ation on which Piaget so heavily relied were grounded prominently in the
dynamic interaction between the person and the social and physical envi-
ronment. Baldwin states, “The individual is found to be a social product, a
complex result, having its genetic conditions in actual social life. Individu-
als act together, not alone—collectively, not singly” (Baldwin 1909, 211).
Piagetian-based constructivism uses the process of assimilation, ac-
commodation, and equilibration—borrowed from evolutionary biology—
as the mechanism by which increasingly complex understandings are cre-
ated. This is also called “intellectual adaptation” and involves the “fit”
between a knower’s current understandings, knowing system, view, or
lens (all terms used interchangeably by Piagetian-based theorists) through
which she interprets the world and her engaged experience.
Sociocultural Constructivism. In comparison, literature on
Vygotsky-based sociocultural constructivism focuses on the social and
cultural environment, artifacts, tools, temporal elements, and engagement
with both peers and—importantly—with more expert others to both
explain how meaning making takes place and how learning occurs. Like
Piagetian constructivism, the motivation for learning and constructing/
reconstructing knowledge is intrinsic to the learner. Vygotsky states that
“learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing
culturally organized, specifically human psychological function” (1978,
90). That is, in both constructivist views, the motivation to learn is inherent
to and within the human psychology of the knower, albeit socioculturalists
prioritize culturally evolving social influences as formational in individual
psychology and do not embrace the genetic epistemological framework
that privileges the individual.
For sociocultural constructivism, culture is the prime determinant of
individual learning and development. As such, the surrounding culture
Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community
life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in
bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use
his own powers for social end. I believe that education, therefore, is a process
of living and not a preparation for future living. (1897, 78)
I question assumptions that initiate this apparent forced choice between con-
structivist and sociocultural perspectives. I contend that the two perspectives
are complementary. Also, claims that either perspective captures the essence
of people and communities should be rejected for pragmatic justifications . . . I
argue that the sociocultural perspective informs theories of the conditions for
the possibility of learning, whereas theories developed from the constructivist
perspective focus on what students learn and the processes by which they do
so. (Cobb 1994, 13)
Situated Cognition
Situated cognitive theories state that knowing cannot be separated from the
context; it exists in situ, embedded in activity, people, culture, and language
across physical and social space and time. Situated cognition is a construc-
tivist theory, drawn from various fields such as anthropology, philosophy
and critical theory (e.g., Bakhtin 1981; Heidegger 1968; Lave and Wenger
1991). Indeed Rogoff (1995) cites Bakhurst as saying, “The study of mind,
of culture, and of language (in all its diversity) are internally related: that is,
it will be impossible to render any one of these domains intelligible with-
out essential reference to the others” (39). Those interested in constructivist
situated learning (Lave 1988; Lave and Wenger 1991) state that education
ought to find tasks and activities “situated” in the situations of the real
world and highlight the importance of using relevant situations for learning.
Rogoff locates her work loosely within this paradigm, although she infers
that knowledge transfers across time and situation.
A critique against constructivism by the situated cognitivists is that
constructivism is a philosophical construct and they thus caution against
making claims about the generalizability of knowledge gained in one con-
text to its application in another (Anderson, Reder, and Simon 1996). This
perspective advocates the use of apprenticeship and “authentic” problems
that are “ill defined” (that is, having no one right logical conclusive answer)
and are located in the complex social environments and modalities that re-
flect those that will be used in the future. Taken together with Rogoff and
continued work on constructivism, some of which is located in this volume,
I would argue that meaning-making construction processes are relevantly
similar.
As such, I propose here that constructivism—both cognitive and
sociocultural—apprehended together by common shared components,
blends with the affordances that social media provides to connect learners
in today’s and tomorrow’s technological world. Specifically, the Internet and
the availability and use of both hard and soft technologies by individuals af-
fect learning and social life. These media create opportunities for commu-
nity (interaction and creation) and possibilities for learning that are broader
than the pioneers of constructivist theories could have imagined. Remark-
ably, learning affordances through social media use are certainly within con-
structivist theorists’ collective vision of the process and products of teaching
and learning.
of new media use. Social media use creates new and larger communities
of learners, reaching a broader spectrum and more diverse collaborators in
the learning process. This may include those with physical and cognitive
disabilities and a plethora of personalities and interaction styles. In tradi-
tional classrooms care must be taken to attend to those less outspoken, the
bullied, the shy, the less popular, or less socially integrated, that is, the non-
participants and excluded others. Interpersonal skills are important com-
ponents of learning and sociocultural adaptation and can be appropriated
via social media use. These skills include social compliance, cooperation,
and the development of positive, effective relationships (Gehlbach 2010).
Students with less developed social skills or who may possess socially nor-
matively objectionable or awkward interpersonal skills and be less socially
integrated face challenges in the classroom, may perceive school more nega-
tively, have lower achievement goals, and may frustrate teachers and friends
(Raver, Garner, and Smith-Donald 2007; Shin and Ryan 2014).
Thus, with technology, the classroom is broader and participation
more equalized. The moral implications of participation among equals
are more likely to be achieved via computer and technologically mediated
social networking. Each person has equal access (if possessing the technol-
ogy) to participation. Technology potentiates active diverse communities
of learners who may be judged more on the content of their contributions
than on the color of their skin, socioeconomic status, or other feature,
which Kegan (1982) refers to as “recruitability” of the person. These
media may obscure or moderate the negative social skills or may render
them less normatively objectionable and thus fail to interfere with positive
social and academic learning goals. According to Mbati (2013) there is a
dearth of research on experiences of the use of online social media, but her
meta-ethnographic analysis found that “discussion forums are ideal for the
stimulation of constructivism and observational learning.” In other words,
technologically mediated social interaction may counter the well-known
gender, race, and expectancy effects of performance in classrooms (e.g.,
Dweck 1986; Weiner 1985).
Social media platforms engage all participants in the education process
to share activities in a virtual synchronous or nonsynchronous time and space.
The processes and products of social interaction that are evidenced in digital
forms and spaces can be drawn together to create confluence. This conflu-
ence potentiates more creative, accurate, inclusive learning than could have
occurred without social media’s ability to bring together a diversity of minds
and mindsets in shared activity, thus affording abundant opportunities for
learning as well as shifts in epistemological perspective about the nature of
knowledge creation itself. It is this kind of learning that is at once peda-
gogically engaging and paradigm shifting—both for individuals and for the
field of education.
In sum, social media benefits constructivist philosophies and prac-
tices. It makes use of everyday cognition by virtue of it being used
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