Constructivism has been embraced by many in the field of instructional design and technology (IDT), but its advocates have struggled to move beyond theory to practice or to empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach. As an alternative to constructivism, a new perspective emerging in psychology, known as functional contextualism,…

In past issues of "The Educational Forum," David Elkind (2004; 2005) and Jamin Carson (2005) have engaged in a dialogue about constructivism and objectivism as viable philosophies of education. In this issue, yet another author joins in the discussion by questioning the role of science and religion in objectivism.

Many e-learning materials lack pedagogical principles and theoretical foundations. The great potential of activating learners and thus enriching learning experience is often unused in instructional software and online courses. Pedagogical theories like constructivist and action-orientated approaches should rather underlie the creation of new…

Image studies, or imagology, was traditionally subsumed under the uncritical notion of "national character", which was itself replaced by the constructivist term "national stereotype". Since its origins in comparative literature, the field has moved beyond the narrow disciplinary confines of the humanities, with their predominantly qualitative…

There is one account in the literature of the application of a solution-focused approach to individual teaching development at university level (Devlin, 2003). The solution-focused approach is based on solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT). The current paper elaborates on the existing account, further outlining and illustrating the techniques that…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between constructivism and neural organization. Support is given for a constructivist epistemology in current brain theory. A brief description of constructivism is provided, followed by the implication of this set of beliefs for viewing humans as self-organizing systems. What has been…

Both mathematics and informatics share common characteristics. Several didacticians propose therefore to define didactic situations permitting learners to "co-construct" knowledge of mathematics and informatics. In this document, the idea is resumed and a certain number of "functional structures" are proposed. These sets of problems take on a…

What it means to use research is a potentially contentious topic. With the emphasis on constructivist approaches in teacher education programs, the traditional explanations involving generalizability are inadequate in that there is no consideration of what the user brings to the use. Discussion of the various ways in which use can be framed leads…

By the development of the technology, every styles of life and human being action face with changes. Fast, global and remarkable time come to be considerable. Social, global, cultural, educational competitiveness have been changed by the implication of the technology. Therefore; these changes also affect the learning styles, duration and method of…

This paper discusses whether thinking skills can be taught. The concept of teaching thinking goes back to the ancient Greeks. The notion of inborn intelligence was dominant until the 1960s but was challenged by the constructivism theory developed by Vygotsky. The discussion is divided into 5 sections: (1) describing thinking and intelligence; (2)…

This paper addresses the issue of how Harvard Project Zero's "teaching for understanding" might evolve over the next 100 years. Schools pitched to an Information Society seek ways of increasing the chances that learners will understand domains deeply and master the new basic skills. Such 21st century schools build upon Paulo Freire's…

Postmodernism is a multi-faceted movement of people who share a dissatisfaction with knowledge claims that embrace universalism. In contrast to science, the centerpiece of the Enlightenment, postmodernism sees only power games of discourse with no external reality existing as the ultimate arbiter. In science education, postmodernism is seen in the…

There is a frequent misperception that the move from behaviorism to cognitivism implies an abandonment of the possibilities of decomposing knowledge into its elements for the purposes of study and decontextualizing these elements for instruction. Cognitivism does not imply outright rejection of decomposition and decontextualization. Two movements…

The "paradigm dialogue" is an attempt to examine the philosophical positions of competing social science "ways of knowing" in the hope of establishing a dialogue among these different schools of thought. Three paradigms--postpositivism, critical theory, and constructivism--were examined in regard to their stances on three…

Arguing that the task of the teacher leader is not to dispense knowledge but rather to provide opportunities for teachers to construct it, this article reports on activities in which teacher leaders engaged during a session on the constructivist approach during the 1996 Teacher Leader Institute. It outlines five principles of learning that…