Educational Research Methods
A site to support teaching and learning...
Constructionism
Constructionism is a variant of constructivist thinking. The term constructivism is used both in relation to how people in general come to knowledge, and to how knowledge is developed during research.
Constructivism as a theoretical perspective on teaching and learning
Constructivism is a label given to a range of theories about student learning and pedagogy. So constructivism may be central to a conceptual framework informing a study into teaching and /or learning, and could be adopted as a theoretical perspective in such a study.
Constructivisms as theoretical perspectives?
There are different flavours of constructivist thought.
Perhaps the most common is what might commonly be called personal constructivism, which focuses on the individual learner/knower.
However, so called social constructivism, which focuses on the social interactions in the construction of knowledge, is also very influential.
A further variation is called constructionism (sic, -IONism) which also has a social focus, in particular considering collaboration between people working together.
Constructionism (or social constructionism)
The constructionist perspective focuses on people collaborating to construct knowledge, and indeed artifacts. Constructionism tend to also focus on technology, and the role of technology in supporting collaborative learning. Seymour Papert saw the value of computers in education as tools to support student learning (‘talking turtle’), long before computers actually became ubiquitous in most schools.
Constructionists favour teaching through inquiry tasks, and in particular through collaborate learning through meaningful tasks such as constructing artifacts.
Example: Beginner’s guides to research
Students studying Educational research were set the task of writing a brief beginning’s guide to particular research techniques that they been testing out. The student worked in small groups to plan what they should include in the guide. They were told the guides would be made available to other students.
The guides produced were:
A Beginner’s Guide to Interviews.pdf
A Beginner’s Guide to Interviews.pdf
A Beginner’s guide to Mind Maps.pdf
This is a personal site of Keith S. Taber to support teaching of educational research methods.
(Dr Keith Taber is Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.)
2016
