Constructivism

Many educational psychologists were more concerned with what was going on inside the human brain than how to get in.  Dewey (1916), Piaget (1973), Vygotsky (1978) and Bruner (1996) each proposed that learners could learn actively and construct new knowledge based on their prior knowledge.  In these perspectives, the role of the instructor is a facilitator (Ornstein and Hunkins, 1998).  For Dewey (1916), a situation represents the experiences of the environment affecting the learner, and interaction takes place between the learner and his or her environment.  So, knowledge is based on active experience.  However, Piaget and Dewey each believed that the educator's role involves the shaping of learners' real experience from the environment, and knowing what surroundings tend to promote experiences that lead to growth (Ornstein and Hunkins, 1998).

Dewey (1916) considered that the main function of education was to improve the reasoning process.  He also recommended adapting his problem-solving method to many subjects.  A student who is not motivated will not really perceive a problem, so problems selected for study should be derived from learner interests (Ornstein and Hunkins, 1998).  Therefore, the methods of constructivism emphasize development of learner's ability in solving real life problems.  As a result, problem solving and free discovery come together.  In other words, knowledge is dynamic and is built around the process of discovery (Dewwy, 1916).  Dewey considered the teacher as a guide rather than a director since learning allowed for creative interaction with the teacher rather than outcome-based teaching.

Vygotsky placed more emphasis on the social context of learning.  Vygotskian theory, emphasizes the importance of the socio-cultural context in which learning takes place and how the context has an impact on what is learned (Vygotsky, 1978).   Since Vygotsky emphasized the critical importance of interaction with people, including other learners and teachers, in cognitive development, his theory is called "social constructivism" (Maddux, Johnson and Willis, 1997).  Much of collaborative problem solving strategy is built on the best known of Vygotsky ideas, the zones of proximal development (ZPD).

Source: TYLEC handout - 'Toward constructivism for adult learners in online learning environments' Huang, H-M., British Journal of Educational Technology Volume 33 No 1, 2002 pp 27-37

Lev Vygotsky

Born: Belarus, 19 November, 1896
Died: Moscow, 11 June, 1934

Vygotsky argued that children learn most effectively through social interaction with people more knowledgeable than themselves when they are involved in jointly solving problems and constructing new understandings within their Zone of Proximal Development.  He put great importance on the place of social interaction in the cognitive and language development of children, since he argued that it is through everyday problem-solving and tasks that socially mediated dialogue is gradually internalised and becomes an inner, personalised resource for the child's own thinking and ability to perform competently on their own.

Source: TYLEC handout.


Microgenesis = the moment-to-moment co-construction of language and language-learning.
Development of competency for a task or activity.

To Vygotsky, all fundamental cognitive activities take shape in a matrix of social history and form the products of sociohistorical development.  That is "cognitive skills and patterns of thinking are not primarily determined by innate factors, but are the products of the activities practiced in the social institutions of the culture in which the individuals grows up.  Consequently, the history of the society in which a child is reared and the child's personal history are crucial developments of the way in which that individual will think.  In this process of cognitive development, language is a crucial tool for determining how the child will learn to think because advanced modes of thought are transmitted to the child by means of words" (Schutz, 2002). 

This is the underpinning of Vygotsky's "social constructivist" or "sociocultural" approach to language acquisition.  This squarely places him outside of Chomsky's innatist position and firmly in the "interactionist" framework of language acquisition.

Regulation, the ZPD and Scaffolding

Children's cognitive development is regulated, facilitated and enhanced through their interaction with more advanced and capable individuals, such as a parent, a teacher, or an older sibling.

Successful learning takes place when the child takes over, or appropriates, new knowledge or skills by shifting from inter-mental activity to intra-mental activity.

ZPD = the range of tasks that children cannot yet perform on their own, but may learn with the help of others or "the difference between the child's developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the higher level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers."

This process of supportive dialogue, or assisted learning, which directs the attention of the learner to the key features of the environment, and which prompts them through successive steps of a problem was labeled by Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) as "scaffolding".


The teacher's role is to elevate a learner's level to the ZPD.  Once appropriated, the new skills or knowledge can be self-regulated by the learner.

Scaffolding involves the following functions (Ellis, 1998):
1.  recruiting interest in the task;
2.  simplifying the task;
3.  maintaining pursuit of the goal;
4.  marking critical features and discrepancies between what has been produced and the ideal solution;
5.  controlling frustration during problem solving;
6.  demonstrating an idealized version of the act to be performed

Donato (1994) "scafolded performance is a dialogically constituted interpsycholigical mechanism that promotes the novice's internalisation of knowledge co-constructed in shared activity."

Sociocultural theory explains language as a tool for learning and thought creation; it is a functional description of the use of language and the thought process by which knowledge is constructed.