Constructivist Approach

History of Constructivism

The constructivist approach has received much attention in the 21st century; however, constructivism was first formally discussed in early 20th century in Russia by Vygotsky, in the United States by Dewey, and later by Jean Piaget of Switzerland. Although Vygotsky and Dewey wrote about educational practice during the same era, it is unlikely that the two truly discussed their ideas due the political climate of the time. It is also unclear as to how familiar they were with each other’s work because Vygotsky’s work was not widely published until the 1970s, almost 40 years after his early death due to tuberculosis. Even so, both Vygotsky and Dewey encouraged educational practices in which the learners are engaged in thinking about practical, everyday, real problems rather than simply memorizing rote facts. Both Vygotsky and Dewey were concerned with creating good citizens through education, thus they believed that helping students become thinking adults who could solve novel problems was more important than simply telling students exactly what they should know.

Following Dewey’s work in the United States, in mid-20th century in Switzerland, Jean Piaget emerged as an advocate for constructivist approaches to education based on his studies of human development. Although Piaget’s theories primarily focused on developmental stages, his theories about learning included the ideas of assimilation and accommodation, which are constructivist in nature. Assimilation occurs when a child encounters something new and in order to understand it, the children incorporates it into the knowledge the child already has. Accommodation is an opposite approach to the construction of knowledge in which a learner modifies the learner’s interpretation of the world when encountering new information that does not fit into the knowledge base that the child already has. A simple example of these concepts is when a child encounters a dog that the child has never seen, the child may be told that it is a dog and add that to the child’s category of dogs. If the child encounters a coyote, thinks it is a dog, and then is told that it is actually a coyote, the child must add the category of coyotes to the child’s knowledge base. In both cases, the child is constructing the child’s own knowledge by linking the new information to the child’s own interpretation and understanding of the world.

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