Psychological theories; A brief survey of the changing views of learning

The constructivist theories takes on a variety of forms just like the behavioristic and cognitivistic. The basic distinction, however, is that while the behaviorists viewed knowledge as nothing more than passive, largely automatic responses to external factors in the environment and the cognitivists viewed knowledge as abstract symbolic representations in the head of individuals, the constructivistic shool views knowledge as a constructed entity made by each and every learner through a learning process. Knowledge can thus not be transmitted from one person to the other, it will have to be (re)constructed by each person. This means that the view of knowledge differs from the "knowledge as given and absolute" views of behaviorism and cognitivism.

In constructivism knowlege is seen as relativistic (nothing is absolute, but varies according to time and space) and fallibilist (nothing can be taken for granted).

For our purpose there is an important distinction within the constructivist school of learning. Basically we have "Cognitive oriented constructivist theories" and "Socially oriented constructivist theories".

Cognitive oriented constructivist theories emphasize the exploration and discovery on the part of each learner as explaining the learning process. In this view knowledge is still very much a symbolic, mental representation in the mind of the individual. However, and this is very important since it is the basis of much of CSCL, the socially oriented constructivist theories stress the collaboratory efforts of groups of learners as sources of learning. Work in distributed intelligence by Roy D. Pea is also very important. Pea states; "...the focus in thinking about distributed intelligence is not on intelligence as an abstract property or quantity residing in either minds, organizations or objects. In its primary sense here, intelligence is manifested in activity that connects means and ends through achievements".

A rich source of information on Constructivist positions, models, environments, and strategies can be found at "The University of Colorado at Denver; School of Education" (Referencedate; 25th of April 1998) here.

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