Constructivism, Instructivism, and Related Sites

The contention between student-centered and teacher-centered approaches has a long history. Constructivism is often related to the philosophies of Dewey and Rousseau, and inspired by Piaget and Vygotsky. Instructivism is related to faculty psychology, behaviorism, and to the research-based programs of the last few decades known as process-product pedagogy, such as the work of Bereiter and Rosenshine.

Opposition to the Theory

• A Critique of Radical Social Constructivism by Peter Slezak. "As I will suggest, there could be no more fundamental challenge to education than the one posed by the radical form of social constructivism, since it purports to overturn the very conception of knowledge in the Western Tradition: The self-advertising grandiosely proclaims, 'The foundations of modern thought are at stake here.' ”
• Constructivism in Science and Mathematics Education by Michael R. Matthews. "Constructivism is undoubtedly a major theoretical influence in contemporary science and mathematics education.  Some would say it is the major influence.  In its post-modernist and deconstructionist form, it is a significant influence in literary, artistic, history and religious education.  Constructivism seemingly fits in with, and supports, a range of multicultural, feminist and broadly reformist programmes in education.  Although constructivism began as a theory of learning, it has progressively expanded its dominion, becoming a theory of teaching, a theory of education, a theory of the origin of ideas, and a theory of both personal knowledge and scientific knowledge.  Indeed constructivism has become education’s version of the ‘grand unified theory’."
• Developmentalism: An Obscure but Pervasive Restriction on Educational Improvement - by J. E. Stone. "Despite continuing criticism of public education, experimentally demonstrated and field tested teaching methods have been ignored, rejected, and abandoned. Instead of a stable consensus regarding best teaching practices, there seems only an unending succession of innovations. A longstanding educational doctrine appears to underlie this anomalous state of affairs. Termed developmentalism, it presumes "natural" ontogenesis to be optimal and it requires experimentally demonstrated teaching practices to overcome a presumption that they interfere with an optimal developmental trajectory. It also discourages teachers and parents from asserting themselves with children. Instead of effective interventions, it seeks the preservation of a postulated natural perfection. Developmentalism's rich history is expressed in a literature extending over 400 years. Its notable exponents include Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget; and its most recent expressions include "developmentally appropriate practice" and "constructivism." In the years during which it gained ascendance, developmentalism served as a basis for rejecting harsh and inhumane teaching methods. Today it impedes efforts to hold schools accountable for student academic achievement."
• Our Oldest Unchallenged Folk Theory -  Carl Bereiter. "Here we are in the information age, relying on a theory of mind that is probably older than the wheel. Every other folk theory—folk physics, folk biology, folk economics—has had to yield to more powerful theories, better equipped to address the problems of an adventurous civilization. According to one story, this has also happened with theory of mind. Something called ‘cognitive science’ arose in the 1950s and developed rapidly. Its most conspicuous manifestations have been in artificial intelligence and robotics, but it has had a significant and sometimes revolutionary effect on all the behavioral sciences. Although it may be true that most of the world’s business is still conducted according to folk theories of mind, this may be only a matter of cultural lag, which will be overcome as cognitive science takes hold. The trouble with this story is that for most purposes the effect of cognitive science has not been to replace folk theory but to reinstate it, after its exile by behaviorism."
• Old Wine in New Bottles: A Problem with Constructivist Epistemology by Michael R. Matthews.  "My criticism in brief is that constructivism maintains the widespread, commonsensical, subject-centred, Aristotelian-empiricist epistemological paradigm, and by correctly pointing to a major error in empiricist assumptions, it then swings to a relativist epistemology without abandoning the paradigm itself. The relativist conclusion only follows within the empiricist paradigm, if this paradigm is rejected — and there are good reasons for so doing — no such relativist epistemological conclusions follow, and certainly no idealist ontological conclusions follow. Epistemologically, constructivism is the well-known old empiricist wolf in contemporary sheep’s clothing; to change metaphors, it is the empiricist wine, so criticised by constructivists, served up in new bottles."
• Constructivism in Education: Sophistry for a New Age by Martin A.Kozloff. " Constructivist writing typically begins with an intellectually dishonest and shallow critique of the "instructivist" (Finn & Ravitch, 1996)--sometimes called "behavioral"--approach. This critique is a thinly-disguised rhetorical device by which the writer stakes an undeserved claim to the moral high ground and tries to convince readers that the constructivist has anything worth saying."
• Are constructivism and computer-based learning environments incompatible? by Stephen Gance. "The purpose of this article is to support my claim that the facile association of computer-based educational technologies as inherently constructivist cannot be sustained. Further, much educational software and many web sites are retrograde in the sense that they largely incorporate behaviorist or information transfer strategies that are antithetical to a constructivist philosophy. I will confine my claim to what I call “learning environments” which I define as software or web sites organized to be the primary source of information and interaction for the learner. Web-based courses which are primarily intended for individual learner use would be an example of such an environment. Often, in public schools, web sites are organized into a “webquest” which involves one or more students seeking information from a set of web sites, largely without teacher intervention. Such webquests would be another example of a computer-based learning environment."
• The Pythagorean Theorem by G. D. Chakerian and Kurt Kreith. "At a recent school meeting, a group of Davis parents and teachers used the Pythagorean theorem to illustrate the difference between a constructivist vs. traditional approach to teaching. Their goal was to provide other parents with a basis for responding to a recent decision by the Davis Board of Education. For in Fall, 1996 Davis junior high schools will offer a choice between two different courses in Algebra 1, one emphasizing constructivist pedagogy and the other relying on a more traditional deductive approach."
• New Metaphors of Learning: Going Beyond "Constructivism" by University of Helsinki. "in current educational discourse, there is much talk about constructivism.   It is a general slogan that is used to separate "modern" and "advanced" practices of learning and instruction from old-fashioned and "obsolete" practices.  The problem is that this kind of labeling does not help to understand what is going on when people are or are not learning something.  Practically all processes or structures associated with learning may be said to be constructed; this kind of declaration does not get teachers and researchers very far. In practical pedagogical situations, putative  "constructivist" assumptions may also be dangerous and counter-productive if they guide teachers or students to belief that sophisticated knowledge and skills can be attained by relying only on a student's own constructive efforts without teachers’ systematic and deliberate efforts to help all students to adopt cultural knowledge."
• Constructivism and cooperation between scientists and educators: A reply to Crowther by Thomas H. Illman. " The varieties of "constructivism" exhibit more "negative identities" (Bickhard 1997, 29) than intelligible positive proposals. Such proposals are needed as a basis for fruitful discussion and eventually cooperation between "constructivists" and mainstream natural scientists (or non-"constructivist" educators). Admittedly, most critics of "constructivism" have also failed to provide positive pedagogical ideas."
• A Response to Steffe's Reply to Lerman on Intersubjectivity: A Case of Interpretations of 'Social' by Stephen Lerman. "I argued that radical constructivism, and indeed cognitivism in general, is too narrow an interpretation of social life to explain all that we need to study in the teaching and learning of mathematics."
• The Failure of Progressive Education: Survey Says Employers Find Grads Lacking Basic Skills by Anna Bray Duff,.  "The promise of the progressive movement in education was grand: a more humane system of schools that would better address the needs of individual children, producing smarter students and adults prepared for their roles in society...The results, however, were anything but grand. However good the intentions, the progressive education movement helped leave American students lagging the world in critical skills. at home, it helped entrench the very inequality of opportunity that schools were supposed to help overcome."
• Terminology Every Parent Must Understand  by E.D.Hirsh. "Constructivism. This term is used to give progressivist education ideas a "spurious scientific-sounding authority." Proponents of constructivism suggest that the only knowledge worth acquiring is that which a student finds for one's self because it is more likely to be remembered and used. Hirsch recognizes that this kind of knowledge is useful. However, he also claims that "both discovery learning and guided learning" are actually "constructivist," so the term doesn't add anything to the discussion."
• Romancing The Child" by E. D. Hirsch Jr. "The Disney Corporation’s Celebration School sounded like yet another fairy tale from the creators of the Little     Mermaid and the Lion King. It was supposed to be the ideal school, set in Disney’s newly created Florida community, Celebration. According to the New York Times, the school was to follow the “most advanced” progressive educational methods. In fact these “new” methods were rebottled versions of earlier progressive schemes going back at least 100 years—as Diane Ravitch has documented in her recent book Left Back—schemes such as multi-aged groups in which each child goes at his or her own pace; individualized assessments instead of objective tests; teachers as coaches rather than sages; projects instead of textbooks."
• Fad, Fraud, and Folly in Education by Martin A. Kozloff. "For one thing, ordinary fads are cheap and harmless.  A pastel blue leisure suit in the 1970's cost $39.95 and when passe' (in two months) could be given to the Salvation Army.  In contrast, pernicious innovations in education waste time, money, energy, hope, learning opportunities, and the chances for beneficent outcomes.  Instead of being taught to feed himself, walk, point to things he wants, operate a tape player or computer, look at the faces of his parents, and turn the pages of books, the fully included 16 year old student with severe mental retardation sits strapped into a wheelchair in a high school history class.  He learns nothing whatever; his teachers know it's a cruel hoax, but "inclusion specialists" are satisfied with "social progress" (increased tolerance and social justice) and have higher self-esteem for a job well done."

Constructivism and Instructivism Links

• A journey into Constructivism - by Martin Dougiamas. An essay detailing my initial learning about constructivism, outlining it's major faces and concepts.
• About Learning/Theories - Funderstanding
• Active Interpretation - Daniel Chandler, Reader-Oriented Theory and Studies Links. Reader-Oriented Theory and Studies
• An Interpretation Construction Approach to Constructivist Design - John B. Black and Robert O. McClintock."Study is a key concept in making design more fruitful in education. We propose that what students are doing when they construct knowledge is studying. Specifically, we think that the term study captures better what should be going on during knowledge construction then does the term learn."
• Anchored Instruction - John Bransford & the CTGV. "Anchored instruction is a major paradigm for technology-based learning that has been developed by the Cognition & Technology Group at Vanderbilt (CTGV) under the leadership of John Bransford. While many people have contributed to the theory and research o f anchored instruction, Bransford is the principal spokesperson and hence the theory is attributed to him."
• Applying constructivism: A test for the learner as scientist. - by Tom Cobb, Dép. de linguistique et de didactique des langues, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. Educational Technology Research & Development, 47 (3),15-31."Constructivist learning theory predicts that knowledge encoded from data by learners themselves will be more flexible, transferable, and useful than knowledge encoded for them by experts and transmitted to them by an instructor or other delivery agent. If this prediction is correct, then learners should be modeled as scientists and use the reasoning and technologies of scientists to construct their own knowledge. However, it cannot be taken for granted that the prediction is correct, or correct in every knowledge domain. The present study attempts to establish conditions in which the prediction can be operationalized and tested. It reports on the adaptation of constructivist principles to instructional design in a particular domain, second language vocabulary acquisition. Students learning English for academic purposes in the Sultanate of Oman followed one of two approaches to vocabulary expansion, learning pre-encoded dictionary definitions of words, or constructing definitions for themselves using an adapted version of the computational tools of lexicographers. After 12 weeks, both groups were equal in definitional knowledge of target words, but lexicography group students were more able to transfer their word knowledge to novel contexts."
• Aporia: Webs, Passages, Getting Lost, and Learning to Go On - by Nicholas C. Burbules. "The sense of being "lost," then, is both a problem of having arrived in an unfamiliar location, and an aporia of unknown signification."
• Authentic Tasks - North Central Regional Education Center
• Beyond the Individual-Social Antimony in Discussions of Piaget and Vygotsky - Michael Cole & James V. Wertsch . "Ever since the publication of the first translation of Vygotsky's Thought and Language (reborn as Thinking and Speech 25 years later) there has been an ongoing debate about the relationship between the ideas of Vygotsky and Piaget. In the brief space available, we have no interest in arguing the virtues of one man's ideas over the other. Instead, we will suggest that by and large commentators on the differences between these two thinkers have placed too narrow an emphasis on their ideas about the primacy of individual psychogenesis versus sociogenesis of mind while neglecting what we believe is a cardinal difference between them: their views concerning the importance of culture, in particular, the role of mediation of action through artifacts, on the development of mind."
• Building an Understanding of Constructivism - Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. "Written activities and exercises alone do not go to the heart of constructivism, but books have laid the groundwork for this approach to learning. The basic writings in this field are sometimes interesting and often illuminating, even though they cannot "give" anyone constructivism. Teachers, however, can use these works to build their own understanding of    constructivism and its place in the classroom. Here are some representative selections of constructivist thinking and of useful guides to constructivist ideas."
• Carving a New Path for Distance Education Research"Though it has been shown that actively involving students in discussion fosters retention of information, application of knowledge, and development of critical thinking skills, between 70% and 90% of professors still use the traditional lecture as their instructional strategy of choice (Gardiner, 1998). Why is this? Perhaps many educators are still having difficulty shedding the protective cloak of their traditional instructivist training. In many cases, teachers teach as they have been taught (Gardiner, 1998). Since an instructivist learning theory has prevailed for quite some time, it is understandable why so many instructors have used a teacher-centered approach in the classroom, and why much of current research tacitly approves an instructivist worldview. This may also explain the tendency of traditional students to exhibit dependent (passive) learning styles (Grasha, 1996)."
• Changing Educational Assumptions and Their Influence on Distance Education Research  - The Technology Source. "To some, the proposed dichotomy between instructivism and constructivism may seem an oversimplification of learning theory. It is still important, however, to understand how underlying philosophies of education influence not only educational practice but also research. The extent to which teachers see themselves as "instructivist" versus "constructivist" implicitly determines the extent to which classroom activities are based on teacher or student preferences, and may also influence the focus of research design."
• Classroom Compass Vol. 1, No. 3 -- Constructivism - 1995 Southwest Educational Development Laboratory
• Cognitive Constructivism: Free Will and Knowledge as Perception -   Francis F. Steen, Department of English, UC Santa Barbara. "Our notion of the qualitative infinity of nature can usefully be brought out by considering the role of the atomic hypothesis of Democritus. Not only did this hypothesis show the importance of speculative new concepts going far beyond what could be demonstrated at the time of its proposal, but it also exhibited a further key feature that we would like to emphasize here. This is that deeper explanations often imply the limited validity of what were previously accepted as basic concepts, which later are then recovered only as approximations or limiting cases."
• Collaborative Learning Enhances Critical Thinking - by Anuradha A. Gokhale. "This study examined the effectiveness of individual learning versus collaborative learning in enhancing drill-and-practice skills and critical-thinking skills. The subject matter was series and parallel dc circuits."
• Computer Skills for Information Problem-Solving: Learning and Teaching Technology in Context. - ERIC Digest, Michael B. Johnson and Doug Eisenberg
• Computers and Constructivist Inquiry - Institute for Learning Technologies (Links)
• Construct Knowledge and Mathematical Concepts - North Central Regional Educational Laboratory
• Constructivism and narrative psychology.- Luis Botella, Ramon Llull University. "During a significant part of its not so long history, psychology uncritically accepted the basic assumptions of what has been termed an objectivist epistemology. Some of these basic assumptions, chiefly derived from positivism and logical empiricism, are as follows. First, objectivist psychology endorses a mechanistic worldview, seeing the world--and its inhabitants--as a complex machine, and events in nature as the product of the transmittal of forces. Second, objectivist psychology views knowledge as a process of value-free observation and accumulation of discrete pieces of evidence; that is, what Kelly termed accumulative fragmentalism. Third, objectivist psychology accepts truth-value as the only valid criteria for justifying a proposition. Fourth, the objectivist application of these and other assumptions to the study of human beings gives place to a view of people as reactive and passive organisms, determined by their environment in an almost unidirectional way."
• 'Constructivism in Cognitive Film Theory  - by Kevin W Sweeney. "In recent years, film theory has seen the emergence of a cognitive theory of narrative comprehension and interpretation. <1> The theory arose from a dissatisfaction with poststructuralist theories of narrative that emphasize the film viewer's unconscious or ideologically coded responses to screened images.<2>  Rejecting this Lacanian-Althusserian model of film narration and viewer response, cognitivists such as David Bordwell, Edward Branigan and No‰l [sic] Carroll analyze cinematic comprehension in terms of active viewers' ordinary psychological processes and strategies of problem solving.  Narrative film viewing, they claim, consists of the same sorts of top-down (conceptualizing and inferring) and bottom-up (sensory, data-driven, automatic) psychological processes that perceivers use to understand events in the world aroundthem. I will refer to this general theory as cinematic cognitivism."
• Constructiivsm - From Philosophy to Practice - by Elizabeth Murphy. "How we perceive knowledge and the process of coming to know provides the basis for educational practice. If we believe that learners passively receive information then priority in instruction will be on knowledge transmission. If, on the other hand, we believe that learners actively construct knowledge in their attempts to make sense of their world, then learning will likely emphasize the development of meaning and understanding. Constructivists generally claim that knowledge is not discovered and that the ideas teachers teach do not correspond to an objective reality."
• Constructing Language at MundoHispano - by Cathy Hall (MOO (Multi-user domain, Object-Oriented) . "MOO (Multi-user domain, Object-Oriented) is a text-based virtual environment that permits synchronous communication between ‘players’ from around the world who are logged on at the same time. They may be working with other players on the MOO to create the MOO environment, participating in a cross-cultural social environment, or collaborating with professional colleagues from around the world, etc. Because of the nature of the MOO environment, e.g., synchronous communication and a text-based environment that can be built and manipulated by the players themselves, MOOs can provide a constructivist learning experience that is not available in the traditional second language (L2) classroom, especially those not in the target language country. Although MOOs offer a culturally rich environment for most any learning situation, this paper will focus on MundoHispano, an environment rich in constructivist learning possibilities for the Spanish language learner."
• Constructionist Learning Theory - by Elizabeth Murphy. "Whether knowledge is seen as socially situated or whether it is considered to be an individual construction has implications for the ways in which learning is conceptualized."
• Constructivist Learning, Part 1 - by Elaine Winters. The entire shape of education is about to change as we shift, slowly, from Objectivism to Constructivism.
• Constructivism - Exploring Technology and School Reform, by Andy Carvin
• Constructivism - University of Bergen, Norway.  A brief overview & interesting links for further study.
• Constructivism - by Leslie Grightmire. "In a constructivist environment the learner has a multitude of ways to address an issue such as experimentation, computer models, and dialogue with peers. Learners are active, independent participants in the learning process testing their knowledge against others and arriving at a solution, or activity, for that issue."
• Constructivism - The contributions of the Constructivist Position. "Hilary McLellan (1996) quotes Nicolas Negroponte's suggestion that we are now in the age of being digital and that the implications in educational terms are not so much technological but rather human.  She notes several trends that are in effect in how technology is being adapted for education, and mentions that the first trend is a better understanding of mental processes (based on cognitive science) as relating to technology and cognition.  One area that is emphasized is the perspective and theory of constructivism."
• Constructivism and Collaborative Enterprises - by Alan Stewart (Links)
• Constructivism and Non-Western Science Education Research  - by W.W.Cobern (PDF Format). "In this paper, I argue that science education research and curriculum development efforts in Non-western countries can benefit by adopting a constructivist view of science and science learning. The past efforts at transferring curricula from the West, and local development projects that result in curricula only marginally different from Western curricula, stem from an acultural view of science. These efforts also ground science learning in concepts of logical thinking rather than understanding. The resulting level of science learning, however, has not met expectations. Constructivism offers a very different view of science and science learning. It assumes that logical thinking is an inherently human quality regardless of culture, and instead focuses attention on the processes of interpretation that lead to understanding. Constructivism leads one to expect that students in different cultures will have somewhat different perspectives on science. Science education research should inform curriculum projects that incorporate this point, thus making science curricula authentically sensitive to culture and authentically scientific. Japanese elementary science education based on the Japanese traditional love of nature is a good example."
• Constructivism and Teaching - The socio-cultural context - Barbara Jaworski. "It has recently become fashionable to talk about constructivism in relation to the teaching and learning of mathematics. I want to make clear at the start of this piece that the term constructivist teaching is not well defined, and further that it contradicts, philosophically, the meaning of constructivism as I understand it. In fact constructivism is not about teaching at all. It is about knowledge and learning. So I believe it makes sense to talk about a constructivist view of learning. And we might ask about the teaching which results from such a view of learning. It is possibly this which is meant when the term 'constructivist teaching' is coined, but I believe it is not pedantic to question its use. Personally I am very interested in the teaching which might result from a teacher's commitment to a constructivist view of learning, and that is what I want to work towards below." 
• Constructivism as a Referent for Science Teaching - by Anthony Lorsbach and Kenneth Tobin. "Constructivism is an epistemology, a theory of knowledge used to explain how we know what we know. We believe that a constructivist epistemology is useful to teachers if used as a referent; that is, as a way to make sense of what they see, think, and do. Our research indicates that teachers' beliefs about how people learn (their personal epistemology), whether verbalized or not, often help them make sense of, and guide, their practice." 
• Constructivism Bilbliography - by Annie and John Selden
• Constructivism in Mathematics Education - Swarthmore College
• Constructivism Links - University of Denver
• Constructivism Symposium - Prof. Robert Carson leads the symposium
• Constructivism vs. Instructivism - by Karen Barton. "This page was designed for researching two pedagogical styles of instruction. Its purpose is to introduce teachers, briefly, to example philosophies and opinions regarding the different models. It is our hope that with this information, a teacher can build..."
• Constructivism Web Pages  - by John Kachurick
• Constructivism, Educational Research, and John Dewey - by Raf Vanderstraeten and Gert Biesta. "Schools are expected to transmit knowledge to younger generations. They are, however, also increasingly criticized for distributing so-called inert knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is accessed only in a restricted set of contexts eventhough it is applicable to a wide variety of domains. The causes of limited knowledge transfer are mostly attributed to the dis-embeddedness of learning situations in schools. Instructional procedures that result in learning in the sense of being able to recall relevant information provide no guarantee that people will spontaneously use it later. "Authentic learning," acquiring knowledge in the contexts that (will) give this knowledge its meaning, is now being presented as an alternative. Underpinning these reform proposals is not only a (growing) concern with efficiency, but is also a new epistemological theory, labelled as constructivism. This paper will, first, focus on the layout of and diverging perspectives within recent constructivist research in education. Next, the epistemological approach of John Dewey will be discussed, which takes as its starting point the relation of knowledge to action. Finally, we will indicate what a Deweyan approach might add to the constructivist research in education." 
• Constructivism, Workplace Learning, and Vocational Education. ERIC - ED407573 97 ERIC Digest No. 181.Author: Kerka, Sandra
• Constructivist Learning Design - by George W. Gagnon, Jr. and Michelle Collay. "This paper represents a collaborative effort of two teacher educators to articulate a constructivist approach to "designing for learning" rather than planning for teaching."  Constructivist Learning Environments - by Elizabeth Murphy . "In spite of the fact that constructivism is not a model of learning, it can provide a strong and coherent theory or set of principles which can serve as a guide in the design of learning environments. The many projects described in Wilson's book and the three projects summarized in this paper serve as specific examples of successful attempts at developing and implementing constructivist-learning environments. Many of the environments exhibited common traits such as the authentic context for learning, collaborative work and an emphasis on problem-solving. The environments all relied on technology to facilitate the approach indicating that computers and related technology have an essential role to play in the realization of constructivist learning."
• Constructivist Learning Theory - George E. Hein. "The latest catchword in educational circles is "constructivism, " applied both to learning theory and to epistemology---both to how people learn, and to the nature of knowledge. We don't need to succumb to each new fad, but we do need to think about our work in relation to theories of learning and knowledge. So we need to ask: what is constructivism, what does it have to tell us that is new and relevant, and how do we apply it to our work? As far as I can see, there is nothing dramatically new in constructivism: the core ideas expressed by it have been clearly enunciated by John Dewey among others, but there is a new, widespread acceptance of this old set of ideas. and new research in cognitive psychology to support it. I would like to give a brief exposition of ideas central to constructivism and widely accepted today by educators. Curriculum developers and cognitive psychologists, and then suggest what they mean for museum educators."
• Constructivist Learning Theory to Web-Based Course Design: An Instructional Design Approach  - Simone Conceição-Runlee and Barbara J.Daley . "With the advent of web-based courses and distance education technology, it is necessary to carefully consider how the use of this technology fosters the learning intended in adult education programs.  In this paper, we have outlined constructivist learning theory as an approach to fostering web-based course development. A constructivist approach allows both learners and facilitators to take advantage of the World Wide Web, because the theory focuses on making connections and making meaning in the learning process.  Web-based courses that are designed with a constructivist approach encourage the learners to navigate, create, and construct their unique knowledge base. " 
• Constructivist listserve - Park College, An email forum for teachers and educational researchers for the discussion of constructivist philosophy
• Constructivist Pedagogy Readings from the University of Colorado at Denver (bibliography with links to on-line sources)
• Constructivist Teaching Strategies - Dr. Graham W. Dettrick. "The essence of the inquiry approach is to teach pupils to handle situations which they encounter when dealing with the physical world by using techniques which are applied by research scientists. Inquiry means that teachers design situations so that pupils are caused to employ procedures research scientists use to recognise problems, to ask questions, to apply investigational procedures, and to provide consistent descriptions, predictions, and explanations which are compatible with shared experience of the physical world." 
• Constructivist Theory (Bruner) - brief overview
• Constructivist Theory Unites Distance Learning and Teacher Education - by Teri Crotty- "With this view of teaching and learning in mind,  the challenge becomes one of designing course requirements which require the learner to mediate and construct with the help of others.  Engaging preservice teachers in distance learning activities seemed to be a logical choice for encouraging students to seek the assistance of others yet take responsibility for constructing their own meaning." 
•  Conversation, Education, Constructivism and Cybernetics - by Elin Whitney-Smith. "Cybernetics is the science of communication and control in the animal and the machine. Many modern cyberneticians are constructivists. Cyberneticians and constructivists claim to deal with conversations and new ways to structure environments; tohave ways of thinking which will change the world. Implying that cyberneticians and constructivists should teach in a way that restructures the traditional classroom. Or to put it more baldly, cyberneticians and constructivists should be consistent in their theory and practice."  
• Critical characteristics of situated learning - by Jan Herrington and Ron Oliver. "When situated learning was first described as an emerging model of instruction in 1989, its principal proponents believed thatthis was just the beginning--the model would continue to evolve and develop with new research and theory. This paper willdescribe the current thinking on situated learning and the critical characteristics that distinguish it from other models of instruction. The use of situated learning as an approach to the design of learning environments has significant implications for the instructional design of computer-based programs. Strategies for the application of these characteristics to the instructional design of interactive multimedia will be explored. Specific examples will be given to show how these strategies have been applied in the development of interactive multimedia products at Edith Cowan University." 
• CSCL Theories - by Jy Wana Daphne Lin Hsiao. "Computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) has grown out of wider research into computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) and collaborative learning. CSCW is defined as a computer-based network system that supports group work in a common task and provides a shared interface for groups to work with (Ellis et al. 1991)." 
• Current Projects and Activities in K-12 Science Education Curriculum Development - ERIC Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education, Columbus, Ohio.
• Designing a Constructivist Multimedia Curricula - University of Texas"Welcome to my pages on Designing a Constructivist Multimedia Curricula"
• ED436298 1999-12-00 Curriculum Disputes in Early Childhood Education. ERIC Digest - Katz, Lilian G. Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education Champaign IL.
• Educational Psychology Interactive: Constructivistic Theory - Developed by: W. Huitt, Dept. of Psychology nd Counseling Valdosta State University
• Educational Technology's Effect on Models of Instruction - Judith Conway. "Many educational psychologists found the behavioral approach unsatisfying. In the areas of problem solving and learning strategies they became more concerned with what was unobservable - what was going on inside the brain. These theories are based on the work of educational philosopher John Dewey, and educational psychologists Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner among others. They propose that children actively construct knowledge and this construction of knowledge happens in a social context. Vygotsky proposed that all learning takes place in the 'zone of proximal development'. This 'zone' is the difference between what a child can do alone and what he/she can do with assistance. By building on the child's experiences and providing moderately challenging tasks teachers can provide the 'intellectual scaffolding' to help children learn and progress through the different stages of development."
• Educational. Technology Literature Review - by Brian Ferguson
• Emerging Student Assessment Systems for School Reform  - ERIC Digest, by Edward Roeber
• Epistemological Constructivism -  Principia Cybernetica 
• Epistemology, Instructional Design and the New South Africa,with particular reference - by Peter de Lisle. "If one wants empowerment and emancipation of learners, an Instructivist methodology can not be an adequate means of delivery. Surely there is a more constructivist way of providing practice for learners? Drills are fundamentally boring, however much motivation is added on. There must be other methods, which are inherently interesting, which do not require an external motivation or reward to retain learners' interest. In Mathematics, learners can be given different scenarios or case studies to deal with that require slightly varied applications of a concept that has already been constructed. The similarities will confirm the learner's ideas already formed, and the differences will challenge the learner to form a better, more generaliseable concept." 
• Essays on Constructivism and Education - Collected by the Maryland Collaborative for Teacher Preparation
• EuroAIED'96 Paper- by Barbara Wasson. "For Rieber, there are two dominant and divergent interpretations of instructional technology: cognitive orientations to learning and instructional design, or instructivism (Reiber, 1992); and constructivism which Reiber says sees computers as a rich source of cognitive tools - an electronic type of "Play-Doh" (Rieber, in press). Although instructivist systems, through their association with instructional systems design (ISD), have their roots in programmed instruction (application of Skinner's behavioural learning principles to instruction), the recent influence of cognitive theory has shifted the early emphasis from instruction to the learner. Cognitive theories of instructional design (e.g., Lowyck & Elen, 1993) are beginning to emerge where notions such as mental encoding and retrieving, depth of processing, meta-cognition etc. are mentioned." 
• From Essentialism to Constructivism: Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads - by Andrew Feenberg. "What Heidegger called 'The Question of Technology' has a peculiar status in the academy today. After World War II, the humanities and social sciences were swept by a wave of technological determinism. If technology was not praised for modernizing us, it was blamed for the crisis of our culture. Whether interpreted in optimistic or pessimistic terms, determinism appeared to offer a fundamental account of modernity as a unified phenomenon. This approach has now been largely abandoned for a view that admits the possibility of significant "difference," i.e. cultural variety in the reception and appropriation of modernity. Yet the breakdown of simplistic determinism has not led to quite the flowering of research in philosophy of technology one might hope for."
• Genetic Epistomology (Jean Piaget) - brief overview
• Grazing the Net:Raising a Generation of Free Range Students  - by Jamie McKenzie
• ILT: Pedagogy for the 21st Century - by Joshua H. Reibel and a Ben D. Wood (PDF file). "To the extent that the Institute follows and advances any one educational philosophy, it is a constructivist one. Constructivism [3] [4] is actually a collection of theories and ideas about different issues in pedagogy that are informed by a range of philosophical/epistemological outlooks. Some of these conceptions are incommensurate with each other; others complement each other. The Institute conceives of the constructivist agenda [5] as primarily motivated by a recognition that most, if not all, knowledge domains are complex and ill-structured in a number of ways that require for their mastery experience with a broad range of cases that reflect the complexity and diversity of the field. Aligned with this idea are the related notions that learning requires a significant degree of practical experience with the application of principles, and that learning is a kind of enculturation akin to the acquiring of natural language knowledge and skill. By and large, knowledge and skill are seen as intimately bound up with each other, such that the folk categories of knowing what and knowing how [6] are seen as significantly interdependent. Flowing from these general principles are more specific practices such as so-called 'anchored instruction’, 'cognitive apprenticeship' [7], and 'collaborative learning' that find articulation throughout the literature and that the Institute brings to life in its projects."
• Implications of Online delivery for teaching and learning in Education and Training - by Ros Brennan. "The specificity of the curriculum or the Training Package which determines the content of delivery will have an influence on the variety of constructivist strategies that can be used Online. Tight curriculum and assessment proscriptions usually focus on a controlled and formalised teaching and encourage a learning environment that is characterised by instructivist rather than constructivist views of what is needed." 
• Instructional approach - Youth Net. "The Student Research Center approach to instruction emphasizes an integrated and holistic curriculum.  All subject areas across the curriculum are synthesized into a dynamic and holistic field of learning for the scientific study of relevant concepts, topics, issues, themes, and problems. This interdisciplinary model of an integrated curriculum eliminates the common practice of scheduling isolated time slots for each subject area of the curriculum (Fogarty, 1991). Students use language arts, math, science, and social studies skills in a synergistic manner throughout the day as they apply them to the research and publication process emphasized by the instructional approach."
• Interactive learning as an "emerging" technology: A reassessment of interactive and instructional design strategies - by Roderick C.H. Sims. "Teaching large groups of students via formal lectures is not the ideal way to encourage a deep approach to learning. Lecturing is a one-way transmission of information. It does not provide opportunities for students to engage in a continuing dialogue with the lecturer, where their conceptions can be shaped through feedback. Nor does it allow students to actively apply and experiment with their conceptions or to reflect on experiences and feedback."
• Is It Constructivism? - by SEDLetter
• ITFORUM Paper 1 - Technology as Cognitive Tools: Learners as Designers. - by David H. Jonassen. "This short paper is about the application of technologies, primarily computers, as cognitive learning tools rather than as instructional media. I will argue that technologies, from the ecological perspective of Gibson (1979), afford the most meaningful thinking when used as tools. In the past, instructional designers have been invested with these tools for the purpose of "designing" instruction which, in effect, only constrained the learners. The only people who significantly benefit from the design process and the use of those tools were the designers, not the learners (Perkins , 1986). Therefore, I shall argue that we should take the tools away from the instructional designers and give them to the learners, as tools for knowledge construction rather than media of conveyance and knowledge acquisition. The process of building knowledge bases using these tools (a process that Papert refers to as constructionism) will engage the learners more and result in more meaningful and transferable knowledge in the learners. I argue that we should invest the power of the technologies in the learners. Power to the people, so to speak."
• ITFORUM Paper 12 - Learner Centered Education, Donald A. Norman James C. Spohrer
• "There is a revolution taking place in education, one that deals with the philosophy of how one teaches, of the relationship between teacher and student, of the way in which a classroom is structured, and the nature of curriculum. At the heart is a powerful pedagogy, one that has been developing over the past hundred years. It embraces social issues, the culture of the classroom, life-long learning concerns, and perhaps both last and least, technology."
• Learner-Centered Psychological Principles: A Framework for School Redesign and Reform by a Work Group of the American Psychological Association's Board of Educational Affairs (BEA). " Throughout its history, psychology has provided vital information for the design of schooling based on theory and research on human learning, development, and motivation. Research in psychology relevant to education has been particularly informative during the past decade. Advances in our understanding of thinking, memory, and cognitive and motivational processes can contribute directly to improvements in teaching, learning, and the whole enterprise of schooling. At the same time, educators concerned with the growing problems of school dropout, low levels of academic achievement, and other indicators of school failure are arguing for more learner-centered models of schooling. Such models attend to the diversity among students, and use this diversity to enrich learning and to produce results within the context of current school reform."
• Learning & Instruction - The TIP Database
• Life and Work in a Technological Society  - ERIC Digest, by Sandra Kerka
• Math Forum - Constructivism: Vygotsky and the Internet - The Math Forum
• Mathematics Education: Constructivism in the Classroom - The Math Forum
• Metaphors for Instruction: Why We Talk about Learning Environments - by Brent G. Wilson
• MIT Epistimology and Learning Group Projects- "We are developing "constructionism" as a theory of learning and a strategy for education. Constructionism is based on two different senses of "construction." It is grounded in the idea that people learn by actively constructing new knowledge, not by having information "poured" into their heads. Moreover, constructionism asserts that people learn with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in "constructing" personally meaningful artifacts (such as computer programs, animations, or robots)."
• Modeling Reform-Style Teaching in a College Mathematics Class - Amy Roth-McDuffie, University of Maryland at College Park, J. Randy McGinnis, University of Maryland at College Park, Tad Watanabe, Towson State University
• NCTM San Diego Sessions on Constructivism - Mathematics Education at The Math Forum
• New Leaders for Tomorrow's Schools, Winter 1998 - Technology and Constructivism
• New Tools for Teaching - by James J. O'Donnell, University of Pennsylvania
• On Constructivism - by Susan Hanley, Maryland Collaborative for Teacher Preparation. "Additionally, the traditional teaching method of teacher as sole information-giver to passive students appears outdated. "
• Ontology of Observing. The Biological Foundations Of Self Consciousness And the Physical Domain Of Existence - by Humberto Maturana
• Operationalizing Constructivism on the WorldWideWeb - by Mildred L G Shaw & Brian R Gaines
• Orlando Sessions on Constructivism - The Math Forum
• Papers on Constructivism - student papers for a course coneducted by Stephen WebbHarmon, Georgia State University
• Paradigms Lost: Towards Integrating Objectivism and Constructivism - by Johannes Cronje
• Pedagogy of Control  - by Kay S. Bull. "There are two competing philosophies and concomitant pedagogues which come into play when we look at ways to design materials for use in Computer Mediated Learning (CML) . . .The first of these is the Pedagogy of Control, which asserts that the teacher is in control of the learning process and should dictate what the student will learn. The second is the Pedagogy of Choice, which asserts that the learner is in control of his/her own learning and that the needs of the learner, in terms of interest, curiosity, and perception of what is needed, are paramount." 
• Pitfalls, Risks and Challenges in Teaching Biology of Cognition - by Juan-Carlos Letelier, Fernando Leniz and Francisco Bascuñan. "Biology of Cognition has had a profound impact in many areas of the academic endeavor. Outside academia the growing impact of these ideas steadily increases with various disciplines using these ideas to influence the behavior of humans groups, ranging from families to businesses. The main concepts of Biology of Cognition are difficult to grasp, thus, some fundamental notions of the theory can be misunderstood. Frequent errors and pitfalls include the identification of a subject-dependent cognition with the notion that the universe is arbitrary, and the misconception that language is a tool that by itself can change the world of the observer. This paper describes our experience in teaching these ideas to post-graduate audiences and focuses on the most common misconceptions that these ideas might trigger." 
• Powerful Ideas in Physical Science: a Model Course - "Powerful Ideas is a new and effective teaching tool for college and university faculty who instruct prospective elementary teachers and non-science majors in physical science phenomena concepts. The materials are published in a three ring binder and include instructor materials, ready-to-copy transparencies, student materials and homework. The student materials are available in both hard copy and electronic format to facilitate adoption to your particular teaching situation. This course was developed by the American Institute of Physics and the American Association of Physics Teachers under a grant from the National Science Foundation."
• Presentation Formats in Concept Formation: An Experimental Study - by Patric Dahlqvist. "How you pick your view on learning theory and instruction is very much based on which view on cognition you adhere to. Forinstance, a situated or social view of cognition holds that the traditional view is misleading or even wrong. A situated/social viewemphasises social and cultural aspects of learning, cognitive apprenticeship for instance. Instruction then becomes taking part ofactivities in a certain community of practice." 
• Pressures on Higher Education: Transformation of the Enterprise at Port 80: Boardwalk - by Douglas Anderson. "The implications of this for education are profound. First, "teaching as telling" is dead in this new world. Instructivism needs to be replaced by constructivism, not because Piaget said so, but because it reflects a fundamental paradigm shift in how human beings will  function in the world. ... Anyone who thinks they can "instruct" students and fill their minds with the information they need to last a lifetime is living in a fantasy world. The future is changing at light speed, not because it is evolving at the force of some hidden hand, but because we are actively inventing the future every day." 
• Prior Knowledge - Jeremy Roschelle, On one hand, educators rally to the slogan of constructivism: "create experiences that engage students in actively making sense of concepts for themselves."
• Professional Teacher Development and the Reform Agenda - ERIC Digest, Mary E. Dilworth and David G.Imig. 
• Project Construct - Project Construct is an approach to teaching in the preschool, primary, and elementary grades. 
• Radical Constructivism - by Alex Riegler. What is Radical Constructivism and Who Are Its Proponents?
• Radical Constructivism and Cognitive Psychology - by Kim Mackey. "Those who believe that education needs a foundation in the modern science of cognitive psychology sometimes feel that they are jousting with windmills.  Virtually every educational movement, whatever its merits, claims to have a scientific basis.  However, this is often not the case."  
• Reconciling Social Constructivism and Realism in GIS by Nadine Schuurman. "An epistemological and discursive divide separates critics of GIS and its researchers."
• Redesigning Higher Education. Producing Dramatic Gains in Student Learning - ERIC Digest, Lion F.Gardine
• Reflections on Constructivism and Industrial Design - Brent G. Wilson, University of Colorado at Denver. "In the 15 years that I have been associated with instructional design, I have seen a gradual but painful transition from behavioristic roots toward a broader theory base." 
• Research papers on knowledge growth in undergraduate mathematics and science teacher education - by J. Randy McGinnis
• Resources for Constructivism – SEDLetter
• Sasha Barab's theoretical inspirations: situated cognition -  Situated cognition, anchored instruction
• Scenario based environments for learning and development of competence - A research theme within the graduate school for Human Machine Interaction (HMI), in Stockholm
• Science Studies and Constructivism by Georg Krücken. "If this approach is applied to science studies, one can ask, first, under what conditions science is a recognized institution within society, and therefore granted social legitimacy and external resources. It is not exaggerated to presume that the societal recognition of science implies the incorporation of external standards, especially political and economic ones. Second, one has to look for internal changes which can be seen as a consequence of these processes and which also affect traditional concepts of scientific identity. Aspects of a changing science within a changing society can then be grasped at different levels of analysis. And under the premise that the Social Studies of Science open themselves towards modern social theory - as an alternative to the ongoing cultivation of inbred concepts - not only the reconstruction of larger networks, but also the observation of scientific laboratories could be an important contribution to science studies in general"
• School Reform: What Role can Technology Play in a Constructivist Setting?- by Melissa N. Matusevich. "The author examines the long-neglected theory of constructivist learning and how modern technology will bring it to the fore. Several examples of constructivism, technology, and their joint application in Montgomery County Public Schools are presented. Also considered are the implications for assessment in a technology-rich constructivist environment. The author demonstrates how the combination of technology and constructivist theory will revolutionize school reform."
• Selected Procedures for Improving the Science Curriculum - ERIC Digest, Patricia E. Blosser and Stanley L. Helgeson
• Self-Organization, Autopoiesis, and Enterprises  - by R. Whitaker. "Self-organization' is a popular theme in current studies of human social activity, enterprises, and information technology (IT).This document introduces one well-developed theory of self-organization (autopoietic theory) and discusses its application toenterprises and their management." 
• Shared Understanding: Implications for Computer Supported Cooperative Work - by William T. Hunt. "This paper discusses shared understanding, a phenomenon involving both people and artifacts. The research on shared understanding is found under various names including: common ground, socially shared cognition, and distributed cognition. This paper will examine the meaning of shared understanding, review relevant research from the computer, cognitive, and social sciences, and suggest some research directions within the computer supported cooperative work area. Understanding in common and distributed understanding are prominently represented. Conversational approaches and the distributed cognition approach, (involving representations and trajectories of knowledge within people and artifacts) are emphasized. Possible situations for analysis, questions to address, and methodologies of choice are discussed." 
• Shared Virtual Worlds for Education - by Charles E. Hughes & J. Michael Moshell. "ExploreNet is an experimental environment for creating and delivering networked "virtual worlds." This system's style of user interaction was inspired by the concept of a "habitat" as first articulated in the LucasFilm's Habitat system. Players enter and interact in a habitat via their animated alter egos, called "avatars." Habitats may be created for many purposes, including social interaction, entertainment and education. Our focus has been to facilitate the creation of habitats in which virtual communities of learners and mentors interact. This paper presents details of the current ExploreNet system, including its user interface, the means it provides for creating complex behaviors, details of its implementation, the outcomes of several experiments using this system, and our plans for its natural migration to a World Wide Web-based system." 
• Situated Learning - George Washington University. "Situated learning has antecedents in the work of Gibson (theory of affordances) and Vygotsky (social learning). In addition, the theory of Schoenfeld on mathematical problem solving embodies some of the critical elements of situated learning framework." 
• Situated Learning - The University of Texas. "The theoretical literature on cognition from a constructivist perspective can also address the environment of the learner.  One theory that has implications for multimedia is known as situated learning or situated cognition.  Jonassen (1994) defines situated learning as occurring when students work on authentic and realistic tasks that reflect the real world.  The knowledgecontent is determined by it's real world counterpart and context.  If knowledge is decontexturalized, then it becomes, as described by Jonassen, inert, the student learns a new concept but is unable to utilize it since there is no realistic context for its use." 
• Social Constructivism as a Philosophy Of Mathematics: Radical Constructivism Rehabilitated? - by Paul Ernest. "A central epistemological issue is that of the philosophy of mathematics. It is argued that the traditional absolutist philosophies need to be replaced by a conceptual change view of mathematics. Building on the principles of radical constructivism together with the assumption of the existence of the physical and social worlds, a social constructivist philosophy of mathematics is proposed. This suggests an explanation of both the apparent objectivity and the utility of mathematics. A consequence is that the criticism that radical constructivism is necessarily solipsistic is overcome." 
• Socio-Cultural theory - University of Colorado at Denver
• Sources of Information about Promising and Exemplary Programs and Materials for Elementary School Science - Helgeson, Stanley L.; Howe, Robert W.
• Some Examples of Constructivist Approaches to the Educational Use of Computers by D.N. Perkins. A review by Tony Brown. "Perkins (1991, 18) claims that the goals of education are deceptively simply. He states that, among other goals, education "strives for the retention, understanding, and active use of knowledge and skills". The purpose for teaching material is for it to be retained by students, and unless it is understood, it cannot be used, and there is no point in teaching knowledge and skills if they are not going to be put into active use by students in their life."
• Student Learning Outside the Classroom: Transcending Artificial Boundaries - ERIC Digest, George D. Kuh
• Systemic Education Reform - ERIC Digest, James Thompson
• Talk of Saying, Showing, Gesturing, and Feeling in Wittgenstein and Vygotsky - John Shotter. "Traditionally in the social and behavioral sciences, seeking a single, unified, orderly account of things, we have spoken and written about ourselves as disembodied, isolated, self-contained individuals. We think of ourselves as existing in a fixed worldof objects that we come to know, primarily, in a visual-intellectual manner, through our observations of them. As such, we have assumed that we can only come to know our own true nature in such a world by our empirical testing of our possible presentations of it for their accuracy. However, unlike computers and other machines, as living, embodied beings, we cannot be wholly indifferent to the world around us. We must, to an extent, continuously react and respond to it, spontaneously, whether we like it or not, and in so doing, we must of necessity, relate and connect ourselves to our surroundings in one way or another." 
• Teachers and Technology: Making the Connection - The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment
• Teachers' Perspectives on a Constructivist Learning Design - by George W. Gagnon, Jr. and Michelle Collay. "This study eflects a collaboration with classroom teachers who share our philosophy. Four experienced teachers had worked with our constructivist learning design for one to three years. The teachers in our study described their reasons for moving from a teacher-centered approach to planning for teaching towards a student-centered design for learning. They shared these reasons with us in a focus group. The questions we asked and their responses appear later in this paper. Finally, we offer insights and recommendations for further study." 
• Teaching and Learning on the Net - University of Colorado at Denver
• Texts and the Construction of Meaning. - Daniel Chandler . "The range of theories about where meaning emerges in the relationship between readers and texts can be illustrated as a continuum between two extreme positions respectively, those of determinate meaning and completely 'open' interpretation.
• The Constructivist Theory in Education - Chicago Academy of Sciences. "The Chicago Academy of Sciences' curricula are based on the constructivist theory of instruction. Students approach each lesson using skills that they have gained from prior units or from experiences in their own lives. Scientific principles and concepts are introduced following exploration with hands-on activities and investigations. Students build their confidence by exploring increasingly complex ideas on successive levels. This page defines what constructivism is and how to use the constructivist theory of instruction in the classroom. Links to constructivist lessons are available. This page is maintained by The Chicago Academy of Sciences' Club."  The contributions of the Constructivist Position - University of Texas
• The Field of Educational Technology: Update 1995--A Dozen Frequently Asked Questions. - by Donald P.Ely
• The Implementation of a Constructivist Approach to the Resolution of Prejudice - by  Hugh Gash and Vincent Kenny. "In this paper prejudice is examined from the point of view of constructivist theory. In the following we should like to provide a perspective on the following issues: the genesis of prejudice, its role in the individual, the conditions under which prejudice changes, and tactics which may be useful in changing prejudiced ideas. Included in this discussion are a number of interconnected constructivist ideas on the nature of thinking: first, the recursive nature of thought (the consequences of thinking become part of future thinking); second, the biological and ontological limits to knowledge (which limits have their own ethical implications); and third, the need to reexamine assumptions embedded in language concerning the nature of thought and its interconnectness with nature."
• The many forms of constructivism - by George Bodner and Michael Klobuchar. "Constructivist theories of knowledge are based on a fundamentally different assumption: Knowledge is constructed in the mind of the learner. These nine words, by themselves, are unlikely to strike terror in the heart of anyone who teaches" chemistry. In fact, the opposite is often the case -- they strike a responsive chord for many who remember their own struggles to understand chemistry. It is only the implications of this phrase that cause trouble, because this assumption leads one inexorably along the path to a corollary assumption: Knowledge is seldom transferred intact from the mind of the teacher to the mind of the student. A second, more radical, form of the constructivist theory has been summarized as follows: Useful knowledge is never transferred intact." 
• The MediaMOO Project: Constructionism and the Professional Community - by Amy Bruckman & Mitchel Resnick
• The Pedagogy of Instructional Technology - David P. Diaz and Kevin F. Bontenba. "Though it has been shown that actively involving students in discussion fosters retention of information, application of knowledge, and development of critical thinking skills, between 70% and 90% of professors still use the traditional lecture as their instructional strategy of choice [4]. Why is this? In many cases, teachers teach as they have been taught. Since an instructivist learning theory has prevailed for quite some time, it is understandable why so many instructors have used a teacher-centered approach in the classroom, and also why most traditional students tend to exhibit dependent (passive) learning styles [5]. Perhaps many educators are simply replicating their own traditional instructivist training." 
• The Practice Implications of Constructivism - Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) about constructivism."If learning is a constructive process, and instruction must be designed to provide opportunities for such construction, then what professional development practices can bring teachers to teach in student-centered ways?" 
• The Production and Consumption of Meaning  - by  Martin Ryder. "In scholarly writing, the use of external references connects our thoughts to the work of others. These links add value to our own utterances by elaborating upon the meaning behind our own expression. Just as a tailor makes a jacket from textiles woven by another's labor, the thoughts we express are artifacts synthesized from the texts of other minds. The paper briefly traces the technology of text from pre-history to the present, with a special focus on current capabilities. The paper offers an analysis constructed representations of meaning within the digital medium of hypertext and investigates the nature of value in an age of information." 
• The Realities of Being a Student in a Constructivist Classroom by Joseph C. Senese. "Although constructivism as an approach to learning has been around for awhile, the ways in which teachers move to employ constructivist principles in their classes have been slow and evolutionary (Brooks and Brooks 1993). Constructivist teaching requires a significant and deep change in teaching philosophy (Caine and Caine 1997a). A single-semester 12th grade elective English class in British literature became the testing ground to see what effect the consistent and total application of constructivist principles would have on student learning. The class was designed to employ the principles of constructivism in every aspect: course objectives, design, and processes. The expectation was that students would take charge of their own learning."
• The Role of Online Communications in School: A National Study - Center for Applied Special Technology
• The Role of Representations in Learning an Interdisciplinary Mathematics and Physics University Course - by Gilli Shama and John Layman
• The School Improvement Research Series  -Topical Syntheses of research findings and bibliographic information
• The Uses and Limits of Performance Assessment - by Karen Stolper.   "PERFORMANCE assessment is one of the "hot topics" on the agenda of education reform -- and for good reason. Performance assessment is a closer measure of our children's ability to achieve the aspirations we hold for them than are conventional forms of standardized testing. Indeed, our educational aspirations have been influenced by the fact that our children will inhabit a world requiring far more complex and subtle forms of thinking than children needed three or four decades ago. For example, our children will need to know how to frame problems for themselves, how to formulate plans to address them, how to assess multiple outcomes, how to consider relationships, how to deal with ambiguity, and how to shift purposes in light of new information." 
• The World Wide Web and the Dialectics of Consciousness - by Martin Ryder. "Consciousness is not found in the brain, but in everyday practice. This is the hypothesis that formed the basis of Vygotsky's work. Consciousness is manifested in our labor, in the communities that are forged by what we do, in the tools we use, and in our language: the products of yesterday's understandings appropriated for today's problems. This paper traces a dialectical process of tool design, social practice, and tool use on the World Wide Web. The proliferation of information technology is leading to the creation of entirely new sets of spatial, cultural, and social relations (see, for example, Landow, 1992; Rheingold, 1993; Mitchell, 1995; Negroponte, 1995; Dyson, 1997). Virtual communities have emerged from a surprising intersection of humanity and technology offering new understandings from mediating relationships characterized by openness, plurality, and co-emergence - the central themes of contemporary literary theory, user-centered design, and constructivist educational philosophy."
• Thoughts on Ed Tech Theory - Brent G. Wilson. "I have long had a predisposition toward theory, and have long felt ambivalent about it. "Guilt" might be too strong a word, but I keep thinking there must be more to life than just reflecting on things and having interesting thoughts! I admire the "doers" of the world--people like Bill Gates or Newt Gingrich--who see things in primary colors and who charge right ahead like they knew what they were doing. I usually don't know what I'm doing, or even what I'm trying to do. Preoccupation with theory can have that effect on a person." 
• TIGoRS in Complex Systems: An Encoding Mechanism for Situated Cognition - by William Sulis. "There has been considerable interest during the past decade in neurophysiological models of mental representations. These models have frequently suffered from problems of stability, lack of robustness under external inputs and noise and a lack of real time implementation. A more general phenomenon, transient induced global response synchronization (TIGoRS), has been demonstrated in a variety of complex systems models, including cellular automata, cocktail party automata, tempered neural networks and coupled map lattices. In TIGoRS, an external transient stimulus induces a clustering of the resulting output patterns within a small region of  the pattern space. In the case of cocktail party automata, such TIGoRS occurs maximally under conditions of asynchronous operation and noisy sampling of input stimulus, conditions prevalent in natural complex systems. Unlike traditional models, the activation of TIGoRS based neural code requires a dynamic interaction between the system and its environment and thus could subserve information processing in situated cognition models. Unlike in cognitivist models, information is implicit rather than explicit." 
• Towards the Necessity of Constructivism as an Epistemology of Agents in the Social Sciences - by Jens Woch. Text file to download.
• Transmission Model of Communication: A critique  - Daniel Chandler. "Here I will outline and critique a particular, very well-known model of communication developed by Shannon and Weaver (1949), as the prototypical example of a transmissive model of communication: a model which reduces communication to a process of 'transmitting information'. The underlying metaphor of communication as transmission underlies 'commonsense' everyday usage but is in many ways misleading and repays critical attention."  Using Hypermedia to Facilitate Problem-Based Learning - annotated bibliograpy, University of Texas
• Vygotsky - Christine Guerra and Ricardo Schutz
• Vygotsky and Assessment - by Sam Wineburg. "Recent research and theory suggest that the kinds of thinking students develop in literacy activities depend largely on the social- cognitive contexts for language use in classroom interactions.."
• Wittgenstein, Education and the Philosophy of Mathematics by Michael Peters, University of Glasgow. "Knowledge in mathematics: Here one has to keep on reminding oneself of the unimportance of the ‘inner process’ or ‘state’ and ask “Why should it be important?” What does it matter to me? What is interesting is how we use mathematical propositions."
• What is Constructivism?  -  Michael J. Mahoney. What is it and why is it growing?
• WWW as a New Learning Environment - Teaching Internet to the University Staff:  Internet Support of Students' Learning. "In this paper we describe the experience we gained when conducting courses on Internet navigation for the new net users. Very often the access to the information via global networks is confused with learning. There is a difference between providing access to information and learning something from that information. A vast amount of worldwide information available to users doesn't offer ways on how to make use of the information. For many students access to information does not lead to learning. Hypermedia technique is an intuitive method to gain access to information, but hypertextual learning environment World Wide Web (WWW) has the inherent problem for the learners to become "lost in hyperspace". As a solution, an amount of instructivism is necessary. The teacher should remain a source of knowledge, i.e. a guide to what is available and who specifies what should be learned." 

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