In T127: Teaching and Learning Lab Practicum during Week 3, we were put into groups and randomly assigned a epistemological theory (behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, or constructionism) to design a learning experience for teaching novices how to drive a car.
We were asked not to make any value judgments about the theory or its efficacy as a strategy for learning to drive. We would be presenting our approach and other groups would guess which theory we were assigned.
My group came up with the following design:
| Activity | Description |
| Recall | Learners are prompted to recall: What steps do you recall someone who frequently drives you around taking before and while driving along a route? From your experience as a passenger, what do you think they do well behind the wheel and what do you think they could do better? What do you feel you don’t know? |
| Interview Experienced Drivers | Learners are invited to interview drivers with 10+ years of experience: Ask questions that are of interest to you; How does this information explain why the the driver you described in the recall exercise did what they did (or reinforces that they made mistakes)? How might his affect how you learn to drive yourself? |
| Co-Create the Road | In a simulation, learners are prompted to drive around on a featureless road: What features are missing that they would expect to see based on your experience, even as a passenger? (e.g., kids chasing balls, stop signs, traffic lights, highway entrance ramps) As learners retrieve these features from their recorded experience, facilitator adds them into the simulation. Learners retry the simulation and reflect: What made this route harder? What would you do the same way around this time or not? Why? |
| Drive “Anything but Cars” | Learners are asked to bring something to “drive” (no wheels allowed), and navigate the hallways with traffic lights and signs: What new things arose for you from navigating this experience with peers? How might this translate to the road? Does it challenge any assumptions you had about driving with other people? |
| Drive in a Simulation | In a simulation, learners are prompted to drive under various conditions such as rain or snow. Learners can participate as either the driver or a passenger. Reflect on your experience as both passenger and driver: Did you crash? What was the reason for the crash? What would you do the same way around next time or not? Why? |
The other groups easily identified that we were using constructivist principles based on the emphasis on building on past experience, interaction with peers and environment, and accommodation of new ideas via reflection.
Ever since this activity, I’ve been haunted by the idea that constructivism (and constructionism) are probably the worst possible way to learn how to drive.
You can’t construct your own understanding of what to do at a stop sign.
You can’t have a subjective understanding of what the speed limit is.
Well actually, you can, but if you do: you will be breaking the law and eventually either have real societal consequences (a ticket) or physical consequences (a vehicular accident).
Just to be clear, I can see how interpreting real lived experience would be the best way to understand that cars are death machines. Hurtling down the road at 100mph, barreling through a stop sign, and murdering a pedestrian would result in a deeply personal constructed understanding. Epistemologically, this is sound.
But for me, the point of instruction should be to make these consequences crystal clear so that individuals do not have to build their own understanding by experiencing them firsthand!
Does constructionism really posit no objective reality? No correct answers?
Does Piaget believe in Objective Reality?
At the time we were investigating these theories in T127, I was also reading about constructivist approaches in another class: T519. In Constructing Knowledge and Transforming the World, Ackerman (2004) writes the following about Jean Piaget’s constructivism:
“The world is not just sitting out there waiting to be uncovered, but gets progressively shaped and formed through people’s interactions / transactions.”
Ackerman also advises that:
“Teaching can’t ever be direct…in Piaget’s own provocative terms ‘whatever you tell a child, you won’t allow her to discover it by herself.’”
I instinctively recoil from these extreme formulations.
I can agree that knowledge is constructed and even our best understandings of the world are maps or “lines of best fit” or analogies which may need to radically reshaped with the addition of a new data point. However, these data points come from somewhere. The model that is being (subjectively) constructed inside our brains is based on inputs from the environment. This is an interaction between the learner and some kind of externality, which some may hesitate to call an objective reality as it is filtered by our perceptions, but it is ultimately out there and not internal/socially constructed. Material reality (or a simulation of it, which is pedantic to argue) exists!
I found the Ertmer & Newby reading – Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective (1993) – to be helpful while working through these thoughts…to a point.
The authors explain that constructivism bridges the gap between empiricism (the view that experience is the primary source of knowledge) and rationalism (the view that the mind is the primary source of knowledge) by emphasizing the relationship between the two:
“constructivists believe that the mind filters input from the world… emphasizing the interaction between these two variables.”
This makes sense to me and reflects my own schema. However, in the same paper, Ertmer & Newby write:
“Since there are many possible meanings to glean from any experience, we cannot achieve a predetermined, ‘correct’ meaning…there is not an objective reality that learners strive to know.”
This seems blatantly contradictory to the model of interacting variables. If one of the variables (”world” / “objective reality”) doesn’t exist, how can there be interaction?
Furthermore, some maps are better fits to the underlying topography of reality. Some interpretations can be more meaningful and more accurately reflect the world than others. Some answers are simply more correct.
Kirschner takes down Minimally Guided Instruction
I know I am not the only one who chafes at the idea of leaving learners to discover everything for themselves on the basis that all such discoveries are equally correct.
Kirschner et al.’s 2006 paper Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching examines research comparing guided and unguided instruction and concludes:
“novice learners should be provided with direct instructional guidance on the concepts and procedures required by a particular discipline and should not be left to discover those procedures by themselves.”
I find Kirschner et al.’s appeal to the evidence to be so compelling that I will quote a longer section here:
“In so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners. Even for students with considerable prior knowledge, strong guidance while learning is most often found to be equally effective as unguided approaches. Not only is unguided instruction normally less effective; there is also evidence that it may have negative results when students acquire misconceptions or incomplete or disorganized knowledge.”
This is an ongoing debate, especially in science education. Despite reading several rebuttals to Kirschner et al.’s conclusions, I tend to agree that instruction must often be direct. Novices cannot be expected to replicate centuries of scientific inquiry in the course of class or even a school year.
Ertmer & Newby’s Implications for Instructional Design
Despite Ertmer & Newby contradicting themselves on whether constructivists believe in objective reality, I appreciate their practical recommendations in applying learning theories to instructional design. They suggest progressing through the approaches based on learner familiarity:
- Behavioral approach can effectively facilitate mastery of the content of a profession (knowing what);
- Cognitive strategies are useful in teaching problem-solving tactics where defined facts and rules are applied in unfamiliar situations (knowing how);
- Constructivist strategies are especially suited to dealing with ill-defined problems through reflection-in-action.
This progression seems to agree with Kirschner’s review of evidence from controlled studies. Constructivist approaches are best suited for learners who have passed the novice and intermediate stages and are already masters in a given subject area.
It’s later in the semester, and I am still carrying this tension. I still don’t know if Piaget and other pure constructivists believe in objective reality. I’m still not sure if constructivism’s claims can be substantiated.
Sometimes I feel guilty for harboring this skepticism: there is so much enthusiasm all around me for constructivist approaches. But I don’t think I’d ever feel safe on a road where drivers have been encouraged to construct their own understanding.
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