Constructivism and Meaningful Learning in Education
Chapter 2. Constructivism and Meaningful Learning
1. What is Constructivism?
Constructivism is an approach that considers the individual’s cognitive, social, and emotional aspects. Learners are not merely products of the environment or internal rules, but actively construct knowledge through daily interactions between these factors. Therefore, acquired knowledge is not a replica of reality, but a human construction.
2. Fundamentals of Knowledge Construction
Knowledge construction involves two fundamental processes: a) the learner’s existing representation of new information or the task to be solved, and b) the external or internal activity the learner performs in relation to it.
3. Jean Piaget’s Genetic Psychology
Genetic psychology, as exemplified by Jean Piaget’s work, is an emblematic theory in this field.
4. Piaget’s Impact on Education
Piaget’s influence on education includes recognizing the student as an active and autonomous learner, promoting a non-authoritarian teacher role, utilizing discovery-based and participatory teaching methods, and organizing curriculum based on students’ cognitive abilities.
5. Resurgence of Sociocultural Psychology
The resurgence of sociocultural psychology emphasizes the role of culture and social mechanisms in learning and human development.
6. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Approach
Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach situates human action within cultural, historical, and institutional contexts, where language mediates action. Cultural traditions and social practices shape the human psyche, highlighting cultural differences over individual psychological uniqueness.
7. The Power of Constructive Mental Activity
A powerful idea shared by many authors is the importance of students’ constructive mental activity in achieving learning.
8. Applying Constructivism in Education
In education, this translates to viewing school as a process of knowledge construction based on prior knowledge and experience, with teaching as support for this construction.
9. The Constructivist View of School Learning
The constructivist view emphasizes promoting students’ personal growth within the culture of their group.
10. Three Fundamental Ideas of Constructivism
- Students are responsible for their own learning.
- Constructive mental activity applies to content with a degree of existing development.
- Teachers engage students’ construction processes with culturally organized wisdom.
11. Psychogenetic Approach in the Classroom
When learners construct schemes and operative structures, teachers facilitate learning and development through indirect discovery, with learning guided by development.
12. Cognitive Approach in the Classroom
Students actively process information, while teachers organize cognitive information, build connections, and promote thought and learning skills. Teaching involves inducing meaningful knowledge and schematic strategies, with learning determined by knowledge and experience.
13. Sociocultural Approach in the Classroom
Students reconstruct cultural knowledge, with teachers mediating and transmitting knowledge through cultural interaction within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).
14. Construction of School Knowledge
Students construct school knowledge by selecting, organizing, and transforming information from various sources, connecting it to their prior knowledge.
15. Learning Content and Meaning-Making
Students assign meaning to content by building mental representations through images, verbal propositions, or mental models.
16. Situated Cognition
The sociocultural approach emphasizes the importance of activity and context in learning. The classroom becomes a process of acculturation where students join a community of practitioners.
17. Ausubel’s View of Learning
Ausubel views learning as an active restructuring of perceptions, ideas, concepts, and schemes within the learner’s cognitive structure. Learning is systematic, organized, and more complex than simple rote associations.
18. The Student’s Role in Ausubel’s Approach
The student actively processes information.
19. Two Dimensions of Learning
- How knowledge is acquired (reception or discovery).
- How knowledge is integrated into the learner’s cognitive structure (rote or meaningful).
20. Characteristics of Reception Learning
Content is presented in its final form for the student to internalize. This is not memorization, but is typical of advanced cognitive development stages, involving hypothetical verbal learning without specific reference (formal thought), useful in established fields of knowledge.
21. Discovery Learning
Students discover the main content, characteristic of concept formation and problem-solving. It can be meaningful or rote and is found in early cognitive development stages. It is also useful in fields without definitive answers.
22. Characteristics of Meaningful Learning
New information relates substantively to existing cognitive structures. Students must have a disposition to extract meaning and possess relevant background knowledge to construct a conceptual framework.
23. Conditions for Meaningful Learning
a) Material must have logical meaning and non-arbitrary structure. b) Students must have a psychological disposition for meaning-making and relevant background concepts, potentially aided by strategies like advance organizers and concept maps.
24. Rote Learning
Rote learning involves arbitrary, verbatim associations. Students memorize information without relevant background, potentially building a factual knowledge base with arbitrary connections to cognitive structure.
25. Meaningful Learning (Reiteration)
Meaningful learning creates knowledge structures through substantive connections between new information and prior student ideas.
26. Conditions for Meaningful Learning (Reiteration)
New information must relate non-arbitrarily and substantively to existing knowledge, depending on student willingness (motivation and attitude) and the nature of learning materials.
27. Cognitive Structure
Cognitive structure consists of knowledge schemas, which are abstract generalizations from objects, facts, and concepts organized hierarchically. Less inclusive information (subordinate facts and propositions) is integrated by more inclusive ideas (superordinate concepts and propositions).
28. Phases of Meaningful Learning
- Initial Phase: Learners perceive information as isolated parts.
- Intermediate Phase: Learners find relationships between parts, forming schemas and cognitive maps, but not yet automatically.
- Final Stage: Developed schemas become integrated and function autonomously.
29. Declarative Learning Content
Declarative learning involves knowing ‘what’ through language forms, such as knowledge of data, facts, concepts, and principles.
30. Factual vs. Conceptual Knowledge
Factual knowledge involves data and facts learned literally. Conceptual knowledge involves abstracting essential meaning and identifying defining characteristics, requiring assimilation of meaning and relevant background knowledge.
31. Procedural Learning Content
Procedural learning concerns the application of procedures, strategies, techniques, skills, and methods. It is practical and based on performing actions.
32. Procedures
Procedures are ordered sets of actions aimed at achieving a specific goal.
33. Stages of Procedural Learning
- Appropriating relevant data and conditions.
- Executing the procedure.
- Automating the procedure.
- Developing an undefined procedure.
34. Instructional Resources for Procedural Learning
Instructional resources include repetition, reflective practice, imitation of models, feedback, establishing relevance and meaning, eliciting prior knowledge, verbalization during learning, active learning, authentic conditions, and metacognition.
35. Attitudinal-Values Learning
This type of learning aims to clarify the values and attitudes encouraged by the curriculum, while eradicating negative attitudes and feelings of incompetence.
36. Values
Values are qualities that evoke appreciation, admiration, or esteem.
37. Attitudes
Attitudes are subjective, evaluative judgments expressed verbally or nonverbally. They are relatively stable, learned in social contexts, and reflect a person’s values.