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GLOSSARY INQUIRY: CONSTRUCTIVISM
Constructivism is a philosophy of learning founded on the premise that we recursively construct our understandings of the world we live in.
Building on the work of Jean Piaget, constructivist discourses might be characterized in terms of efforts to understand an individual’s conceptual development in terms of metaphors of biological development. Concepts are thus seen as evolving and rooted in one’s physical engagements with the world; learning is seen as an organic process through which a learner continuously adapts interpretations and expectations in order to incorporate new experiences and maintain coherence.
Constructivism’s insight that learners recursively construct meaning or knowledge is compatible with complexity. Indeed, complexity science offers a way to reconcile the accounts of radical constructivists and social constructivists, by acknowledging that each discourse is appropriate to the level it focuses on (respectively, individual and social/collective knowledge) and is not reducible to the other.
See related terms: Adaptation, Evolution, Recursion, Complexity Science.
