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Theorist Paper

Tatum Ronke

Educational Psychology

November 11, 2016

Constructivist Theory, or instructional design, is a learning theory in psychology which

explains how people may obtain knowledge and learn. This theory proposes that humans

construct knowledge and meaning from their own experiences. To put in shorter terms, it is how

people learn. Every person may learn a little bit differently but, each learner selects and converts

information, constructs propositions, and makes decisions, relying on a cognitive structure to do

so. Cognitive structure provides meaning and organization to experiences and allows the

individual to go beyond the information given. (Constructivist Theory)

It is thought that human development is predicted by what we call milestones. This

development can be affected by heredity, physical or mental characteristics genetically passing

form one generation to the next, or by the environment, which is the world around you. A man

by the name Jean Piaget made assumptions about how children learned and later came up with

the theory of Cognitive Development, or the developmental stage theory.

Piagets assumptions were that of children and how they learned. He said that children

are naturally curious, meaning they want to always know more or why something is. He assumed

that children learned through their own experiences or schemes. A schema describes a pattern of

thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them.

Child-centered classrooms and open education are direct claims of Piagets views.
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In Piagets study of education, he focuses on two processes, assimilation and

accommodation. Assimilation is how a human can perceive and adapt to new information and

accommodation is the process of taking new information and altering old schemas in order to fit

them in the new information. These two processes cannot exist without the other.

In Piagets developmental stage theory, he broke the learning development of a child

down in to four stages. The first of the four stages is the Sensorimotor Stage. In this stage the age

of the child is from birth to 2-years-old. In the sensory-motor stage the child learns that they are

separate form their environment. Piaget covers objects permanence; a childs understanding that

objects continue to exist even though they cannot see or hear them. When this happens it is

object permanence. An example would be playing a game of Peek-a-boo. The reason for this

example is because, when a person playing it puts their hand over their face the child can no

longer see them but they are aware that the person is just behind the hands. The next stage is the

Preoperational stage.

In the Preoperational stage, The child, as Piaget once said, is lacking the cognitive

structures possessed by the concrete operational child. From the age of two to six or seven, is

this stage where the child is overcome with the principles of egocentrism, animism, and others.

The child can only see things in their own ways, egocentrism. They are unable to understand that

other people have views on situations. This leads us to the Concrete operational stage.

In this stage the child is six or seven and lasts until the child is about twelve or thirteen.

Abstract starts to take over the logical reasoning. The child becomes and adolescents in such

words that they start to be able to see themselves in the future and can start to plan a pathway

theyd like to take on. Throughout their life they take those formal operations and start to change
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them as they encounter and experience new things in their lives. They take those fantasies and

make them realistic or reality.

Lev Vygotsky, the founder of the theory of cultural-historical psychology, he was the

theorist who came up with the Social Development Theory. He stated that Social interaction

plays a fundamental role in the process of cognitive development. In contrast to Jean Piagets

understanding of child development (in which development necessarily precedes learning),

Vygotsky felt social learning precedes development. (Social) Vygotsky discusses the Zone of

Proximal Development (ZPD), this is the distance between a students ability to perform a task

under adult guidance and/ or with peer collaboration or independently.

Vygotsky really focused on the connection between people and the sociocultural

situation in that they act and interact in shared environments. He thought that humans use

utensils that develop from a culture, that of speech and writing, to intermediate their social

environments. Lev Vygotsky uses scaffolding in instruction to promote development.

Scaffolding is a temporary framework that is put up for support and access to meaning and taken

away as needed when the child secures control of success with a task. This allows the learners to

complete tasks that they would not usually be able to complete on their own. An example would

be that of the teacher providing a guide line on how to format a paper, the student uses the guide

lines for a couple weeks then slowly stops using them, and in the end they have learned the task

of formatting a paper.

There are many teaching practices that constructivist view of learning can point towards

in the classroom. Constructivism generally means that the teacher is encouraging students to use

active practices, such as experiments and real-world problem solving. This helps students make

more knowledge that they can reflect on and discuss and how it can change their understandings
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of the topic. The teacher should know, or have an idea, of what the student already knows, and

then they take that and make activities that address that knowledge and build on it.

In constructivism students should be questioning their strategies and themselves. The

teacher should look for their student to become expert learners. This helps them to keep

learning! Constructivism modifies the role of the teacher, helping he or she help the students

construct knowledge instead of just producing facts on a topic. The constructivist teacher

provides tools such as problem-solving and inquiry-based learning activities with which students

formulate and test their ideas, draw conclusions and inferences, and pool and convey their

knowledge in a collaborative learning environment. (Constructivism) It transforms a student to

an active participant rather than a passive recipient. Some things that can take place in a

Constructivist classroom would be to work with the students natural curiosity, linking new

learnings to old, and encourage students to share their opinions and beliefs.

It is important to include the characteristics of intelligence. This list could be used as

guide lines to a classroom using constructivism. The content of the classroom needs to be

adaptive and dynamic, meaning that is able to be changed and manipulated to the needs of the

classroom and the students partaking in the content. When working on projects and experiments

the content and tasks should be related to the learning ability of the students in the class, and

connected to items the students already know. The students can be challenged and use many

different mental processes during the class. They need to learn how to problem solve and work

through different strategies in their work. The teacher can present the context in a variety of

ways, whether it is on the computer, a book, or paper, and give many solutions on how to find

the answers. It is good to challenge the students but also to give them the material in a way that
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they learn best. Constructivism is solely based on the capacity of the students prior knowledge

and the ability of the student to grow on it and reinforce it with new knowledge.

Overall the Theory of Constructivism is solely based on the students that are in the

classroom. It is all about building on prior knowledge that the student already has and making

real-world connections and building off of them. Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget help us to

understand more in depth how the student learns, and how they interact. Putting constructivism

in to the teaching of a classroom can be very easy to do if the teacher is willing to find the ways

that work best for his or her students.

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Work Cited

"Constructivist Learning Theory | Exploratorium". Exploratorium. N. p., 2016. Web. 7 Nov.

xxxxx2016.

"Constructivist Theory". Instructionaldesign.org. N. p., 2016. Web. 7 Nov. 2016.

"Constructivism As A Paradigm For Teaching And Learning". Thirteen.org. N. p., 2016. Web. 7

xxxxxNov. 2016.

Ormond, J. E. (2012). Essentials of Educational Psychology. Merrill Prentice Hall. Upper

xxxxxSaddle River, New Jersey and Columbus, Ohio.

"Social Development Theory". Learning Theories. N. p., 2014. Web. 7 Nov. 2016.