ABSTRACT
The design of effective learning environments is taking on increasing importance with the growing dissatisfaction with our education systems at both the pre-K-12 and the post-secondary levels. There have been wide fluctuations in strategies at both levels, but over the past two decades arguably the dominant approaches to the design of instruction have been driven by the conceptual frameworks and theories called “constructivism.” The purpose of this book is to discuss the present status of constructivism, applied to teaching and the development of instructional materials. Of course constructivism is not a new view. Von Glasersfeld (1989) attributes the first constructivist theory to an Italian philosopher, Giambattista Vico, in the early 18th century. As described by von Glasersfeld, “one of Vico’s basic ideas was that epistemic agents can know nothing but the cognitive structures they themselves have put together . . . ‘to know’ means to know how to make” (1989, p. 123). The foundation for the current resurgence in interest, as reflected in the chapters in this volume, can be traced to the work of Vygotsky (1978), Dewey (1929), Piaget (1952), and Bruner (1966). But the more immediate stimulus for the growth of constructivist theory and its application to instruction can arguably be linked to three more recent articles. Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) argued that knowledge is situated in the activity of the learner and is a product of that activity and the context and culture in which it occurs. This situativity view is one of the defining characteristics of the constructivist framework. It contrasts to the then prevailing information-processing view of learning as processing information composed of concepts, procedures, and facts. While context was of little importance in the traditional view (Chanquoy, Tricot, & Sweller, 2007), the constructivist saw the context, including the goals of the learner, as integral to the understanding that developed. Resnick (1987), in her AERA presidential address, examined the situativity view from the perspective of informal learning out of school. Specifically, she contrasted learning in everyday activities to the design of learning in school and explored how those two contexts or situations affected what is learned. She noted
four contrasts with learning out of school typically involving: socially shared activities rather than individual learning; direct engagement rather than decontextualized symbolic thinking; the use of cognitive tools (e.g., the roofer using a pitch calculator) rather than unaided thought; and, learning situation-specific skills rather than general skills. Lave and Wenger (1991) extended the situativity framework to a more ethnographic analysis of learning in communities. Their study of communities of practice demonstrated the role of situated learning through apprenticeship and, most importantly, the development of identity as one participates in a community of practice. Duffy and Jonassen (1992) speculated that the interest in constructivism arising from this work stemmed in large part from the impact of the information age on instructional requirements. “Traditional models of learning and instruction emphasized forms of mastering the information in a content domain. . . . However, it is simply no longer possible (there is too much) or even reasonable (it changes too rapidly) to master most content domains” (1992, p. ix). Thus, from this perspective, the interest was not so much in learning’s theoretical base but in the need for a new approach to meet new learning demands. Duffy and Jonassen (1992) sought to identify the implications of the constructivist views of learning for the design of instruction by engaging constructivist and traditional instructional designers in a conversation about instructional design. The goal was to find common threads to form the basis for an instructional theory based on constructivism and the development of principles for the design of instruction. In the 17 years since the Duffy and Jonassen (1992) book was published, there has been little progress in developing the instructional theory or identifying those design principles tied to constructivism. The lack of an emerging instructional theory parallels the lack of refinement of constructivist theory. Indeed, to us it would appear that constructivism remains more of a philosophical framework than a theory that either allows us to precisely describe instruction or prescribe design strategies. Of course, there are numerous instructional models proposed based on the constructivist framework. But there are seldom efforts to look across models to define common principles or to refine the model and its theoretical underpinnings in ways that can be tested. A notable effort to identify design principles has been supported by the National Science Foundation and spearheaded by the Israeli Institute of Technology (Kali, in press; https:// design-principles.org). This database defines design features primarily for the use of technology. The features are linked to principles that, in turn, are hierarchically linked. Thus the database provides potential. However, it does not provide or attempt to induce a theoretical framework in which the consistency of principles and features can be assessed. Nor does it seem to have generated the research base that would help provide stronger instructional guidance on the use and limitations of the principles and features. The lack of a well-specified instructional theory or articulation of learning principles may also be seen in the discussions of scaffolding, i.e., providing guid-
ance in instruction. It was introduced by Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) and referred to creating a “highly constrained situation” (Pea, 2004). This is interesting since Bruner also introduced discovery learning, which has been interpreted as providing minimal guidance in learning (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006). Scaffolding differs from the broader use of guidance in two ways (see Pea, 2004). First, guidance is provided only when learners are unable to proceed. That is, it scaffolds or helps learners move beyond what they can do without assistance. Second, guidance is gradually withdrawn or faded as the learner develops competence. Perhaps the idea of providing guidance only as needed may be the basis for the misinterpretation that constructivists do not provide guidance. While scaffolding is central to the design of constructivist learning environments, constructivists have been slow to formulate testable principles-or even specific guidance-for the use of scaffolding. In discussing the papers in a special issue on scaffolding in The Journal of the Learning Sciences, Pea (2004) noted that:
A theory of scaffolding should successfully predict for any given learner and any given task what forms of support provided by what agent(s) and designed artifacts would suffice for enabling that learner to perform at a desirable level of proficiency on that task, which is known to be unachievable without such scaffolding.
