Constructivism (psychological school)

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In psychology, constructivism refers to many schools of thought that, though extraordinarily different in their techniques (applied in fields such as education and psychotherapy), are all connected by a common critique of previous standard approaches, and by shared assumptions about the active constructive nature of human knowledge. In particular, the critique is aimed at the "associationist" postulate of empiricism, "by which the mind is conceived as a passive system that gathers its contents from its environment and, through the act of knowing, produces a copy of the order of reality". [1] :16

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In contrast, "constructivism is an epistemological premise grounded on the assertion that, in the act of knowing, it is the human mind that actively gives meaning and order to that reality to which it is responding". [1] :16 The constructivist psychologies theorize about and investigate how human beings create systems for meaningfully understanding their worlds and experiences. [2]

In psychotherapy, for example, this approach could translate into a therapist asking questions that confront a client's worldview in an effort to expand his or her meaning-making habits. The assumption here is that clients encounter problems not because they have a mental disorder but in large part because of the way they frame their problems, or the way people make sense of events that occur in their life. [3]

Constructivist psychology in education

Constructivist psychology when applied to education emphasizes that students are always engaged in a process of actively constructing meaning—a process which "the teacher can only facilitate or thwart, but not himself invent". [4]

Jean Piaget's theory describes how children do not simply mimic everything that is part of the external environment, but rather that developing and learning is an ongoing process and interchange between individuals and their surroundings, a process through which individuals develop increasingly complex schemas. [5] According to Angela O'Donnell and colleagues, constructivism describes how a learner constructs knowledge via different concepts: complex cognition, scaffolding, vicarious experiences, modeling, and observational learning. [6] This makes students, teachers, the environment and anyone or anything else in which the student has interaction active participants in their learning.

Some constructivist theories

Genetic epistemology

Jean Piaget (1896–1980), the creator of genetic epistemology, argued that positions of knowledge are grown into; that they are not given a priori, as in Kant's epistemology, but rather that knowledge structures develop through interaction. In Behavior and Evolution, Piaget said that "behaviour is the motor of evolution". [7] His major publications spanned fifty years from the 1920s to the 1970s. Piaget's approach to constructivism was further developed in neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development.

Personal construct theory

George Kelly (1905–1967), the creator of personal construct theory, was concerned primarily with the epistemic role of the observer in interpreting reality. He argued that the way we expect to experience the world alters how we feel about it and act. [8] In other words, we order ourselves by ordering our thoughts. The goal of his therapeutic approach was therefore to allow the client to explore their own minds, acting as a facilitator of the exploration of their own meanings, or "constructs". Kelly's major publications were published in the 1950s and 1960s.

Post-rationalist cognitive therapy

Vittorio Guidano (1944–1999), the creator of post-rationalist cognitive therapy, [9] hypothesized that the mind is a complex system of tacit abstract rules responsible for the concrete and particular qualities of our conscious experience. [1] :20 His major publications were published in the 1980s and 1990s. In the years since Guidano's contributions, there has been much debate among embodied cognition researchers about to what degree cognition is abstract or amodal versus modal. [10]

See also

Related Research Articles

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in contemporary epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Piaget</span> Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher and academic (1896–1980)

Jean William Fritz Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called genetic epistemology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social constructionism</span> Sociological theory regarding shared understandings

Social constructionism is a term used in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory. The term can serve somewhat different functions in each field; however, the foundation of this theoretical framework suggests various facets of social reality—such as concepts, beliefs, norms, and values—are formed through continuous interactions and negotiations among society's members, rather than empirical observation of physical reality. The theory of social constructionism posits that much of what individuals perceive as 'reality' is actually the outcome of a dynamic process of construction influenced by social conventions and structures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Constructivism (philosophy of science)</span> Branch in philosophy of science

Constructivism is a view in the philosophy of science that maintains that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, which seeks to measure and construct models of the natural world. According to constructivists, natural science consists of mental constructs that aim to explain sensory experiences and measurements, and that there is no single valid methodology in science but rather a diversity of useful methods. They also hold that the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction. Constructivism opposes the philosophy of objectivism, embracing the belief that human beings can come to know the truth about the natural world not mediated by scientific approximations with different degrees of validity and accuracy.

Within personality psychology, personal construct theory (PCT) or personal construct psychology (PCP) is a theory of personality and cognition developed by the American psychologist George Kelly in the 1950s. The theory addresses the psychological reasons for actions. Kelly proposed that individuals can be psychologically evaluated according to similarity–dissimilarity poles, which he called personal constructs. The theory is considered by some psychologists as forerunner to theories of cognitive therapy.

The psychology of learning refers to theories and research on how individuals learn. There are many theories of learning. Some take on a more behaviorist approach which focuses on inputs and reinforcements. Other approaches, such as neuroscience and social cognition, focus more on how the brain's organization and structure influence learning. Some psychological approaches, such as social constructivism, focus more on one's interaction with the environment and with others. Other theories, such as those related to motivation, like the growth mindset, focus more on individuals' perceptions of ability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Constructivism (philosophy of education)</span> Philosophical viewpoint about the nature of knowledge; theory of knowledge

Constructivism in education is a theory that suggests that learners do not passively acquire knowledge through direct instruction. Instead, they construct their understanding through experiences and social interaction, integrating new information with their existing knowledge. This theory originates from Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development.

In psychology and cognitive science, a schema describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. It can also be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information, such as a mental schema or conceptual model. Schemata influence attention and the absorption of new knowledge: people are more likely to notice things that fit into their schema, while re-interpreting contradictions to the schema as exceptions or distorting them to fit. Schemata have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. Schemata can help in understanding the world and the rapidly changing environment. People can organize new perceptions into schemata quickly as most situations do not require complex thought when using schema, since automatic thought is all that is required.

Radical constructivism is an approach to epistemology that situates knowledge in terms of knowers' experience. It looks to break with the conception of knowledge as a correspondence between a knower's understanding of their experience and the world beyond that experience. Adopting a skeptical position towards correspondence as in principle impossible to verify because one cannot access the world beyond one's experience in order to test the relation, radical constructivists look to redefine epistemology in terms of the viability of knowledge within knowers' experience. This break from the traditional framing of epistemology differentiates it from "trivial" forms of constructivism that emphasise the role of the knower in constructing knowledge while maintaining the traditional perspective of knowledge in terms of correspondence. Radical constructivism has been described as a "post-epistemological" position.

Constructivist teaching is based on constructivism. Constructivist teaching is based on the belief that learning occurs as learners are actively involved in a process of meaning and knowledge construction as opposed to passively receiving information.

Enactivism is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. It claims that the environment of an organism is brought about, or enacted, by the active exercise of that organism's sensorimotor processes. "The key point, then, is that the species brings forth and specifies its own domain of problems ...this domain does not exist "out there" in an environment that acts as a landing pad for organisms that somehow drop or parachute into the world. Instead, living beings and their environments stand in relation to each other through mutual specification or codetermination" (p. 198). "Organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, which they then translate into internal representations. Natural cognitive systems...participate in the generation of meaning ...engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: they enact a world." These authors suggest that the increasing emphasis upon enactive terminology presages a new era in thinking about cognitive science. How the actions involved in enactivism relate to age-old questions about free will remains a topic of active debate.

Coherence therapy is a system of psychotherapy based in the theory that symptoms of mood, thought and behavior are produced coherently according to the person's current mental models of reality, most of which are implicit and unconscious. It was founded by Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley in the 1990s. It has been considered among the most well respected postmodern/constructivist therapies.

Leslie Samuel Greenberg is a Canadian psychologist born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is one of the originators and primary developers of Emotion-Focused Therapy for individuals and couples. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at York University in Toronto, and also director of the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic in Toronto. His research has addressed questions regarding empathy, psychotherapy process, the therapeutic alliance, and emotion in human functioning.

Genetic epistemology or 'developmental theory of knowledge' is a study of the origins (genesis) of knowledge (epistemology) established by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. This theory opposes traditional epistemology and unites constructivism and structuralism. Piaget took epistemology as the starting point and adopted the method of genetics, arguing that all knowledge of the child is generated through interaction with the environment.

Constructivism has been considered as a dominant paradigm, or research programme, in the field of science education since the 1980s. The term constructivism is widely used in many fields, and not always with quite the same intention. This entry offers an account of how constructivism is most commonly understood in science education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meaning-making</span> Process of understanding changes in life

In psychology, meaning-making is the process of how people construe, understand, or make sense of life events, relationships, and the self.

Vittorio Filippo Guidano was an Italian neuropsychiatrist, creator of the cognitive procedural systemic model and contributor to constructivist post-rationalist cognitive therapy. His cognitive post-rationalist model was influenced by attachment theory, evolutionary epistemology, complex systems theory, and the prevalence of abstract mental processes proposed by Friedrich Hayek. Guidano conceived the personal system as a self-organized entity, in constant development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan Pascual-Leone</span>

Juan Pascual-Leone is a developmental psychologist and founder of the neo-Piagetian approach to cognitive development. He introduced this term into the literature and put forward key predictions about developmental growth of mental attention and working memory.

Barbara S. Held is the Barry N. Wish Research Professor of Psychology and Social Studies Emerita at Bowdoin College in the fields of clinical psychology and theoretical/philosophical psychology. She served as President of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology from 2008 to 2009, and was recipient of the 2012 Joseph B. Glitter Award from the American Psychological Association recognizing her "scholarly contribution to the philosophical foundations of psychological knowledge."

Epistemic cognition, sometimes known as epistemological beliefs, or personal epistemology, is "cognition about knowledge and knowing", an area of research in the learning sciences and educational psychology. Research into epistemic cognition investigates people's beliefs regarding the characteristics of knowledge and knowing—as distinct from thinking or believing in general—and the impact of this on learning.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Balbi, Juan (2008). "Epistemological and theoretical foundations of constructivist cognitive therapies: post-rationalist developments" (PDF). Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences. 1 (1): 15–27. Retrieved 2010-10-19.
  2. Raskin, Jonathan D. (Spring 2002). "Constructivism in psychology: personal construct psychology, radical constructivism, and social constructionism" (PDF). American Communication Journal. 5 (3). Retrieved 2009-02-07.
  3. Neimeyer, Robert A.; Raskin, Jonathan D., eds. (2000). Constructions of disorder: meaning-making frameworks for psychotherapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN   1557986290. OCLC   42009389.
  4. Kegan, Robert (1982). The evolving self: problem and process in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p.  255. ISBN   0674272307. OCLC   7672087.
  5. Piaget, Jean (1983). "Piaget's theory". In Mussen, Paul Henry; Carmichael, Leonard (eds.). Handbook of child psychology: formerly Carmichael's Manual of child psychology. Vol. 1 (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. pp.  103–128. ISBN   0471090573. OCLC   9324435.
  6. O'Donnell, Angela M.; Reeve, Johnmarshall; Smith, Jeffrey K. (2012) [2007]. "Social learning theory, complex cognition, and social constructivism". Educational psychology: reflection for action (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. pp.  254–289. ISBN   9781118076132. OCLC   751719458.
  7. Piaget, Jean (1978) [1976]. Behavior and evolution (1st American ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. p.  142. ISBN   0394418107. OCLC   3869418.
  8. Kelly, George (1991) [1955]. The psychology of personal constructs. London; New York: Routledge in association with the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology. ISBN   0415037999. OCLC   21760190.
  9. Guidano, Vittorio F. (1991). The self in process: toward a post-rationalist cognitive therapy. New York: Guilford Press. ISBN   0898624479. OCLC   22665277.
  10. See, for example, the articles in a special issue of Psychonomic Bulletin & Review on theories of meaning organization in the brain: Mahon, Bradford Z.; Hickok, Gregory (August 2016). "Arguments about the nature of concepts: symbols, embodiment, and beyond". Psychonomic Bulletin & Review . 23 (4): 941–958. doi:10.3758/s13423-016-1045-2. PMC   4975657 . PMID   27282991.

Further reading

Constructivism in education

Constructivism in psychotherapy