I want to take a bit of time to think about what my understanding of the Constructivist and Behaviorist Learning philosophies are all about.
I have been involved in a fair amount of discussions over the past few days, and the thing I keep coming back to is that from what I am hearing, Constructivism and Behaviorism, as philosophies have to do with how the proponents of these ideas believe that students learn, and this therefore affects how a given teacher will teach, or a given instructional designer will design.
In a nutshell, the Constructivists believe that learning happens in an individual as he or she experiences reality and constructs knowledge based on their own interpretations of what happens in their environment. Behaviorism, on the other hand, posits that learning is a change in behavior prompted by the environment.
The two theories are at odds because the constructivists believe that reality is open to interpretation and we, as individuals, develop a mental model to deal with reality, whereas the behaviorists believe that reality is what it is and we learn the rules for interacting with reality (mostly through observable trial and error).
This apparently has huge implications for how teaching is done, since a constructivist will employ different techniques when teaching than a behaviorist would.
In reality, I think that there are contexts that can dictate either approach or both. These constraints are determined largely by the environment in which the learning takes place, the participants, economic realities and several other factors.
The early behaviorists did plenty of experimentation that proves that their techniques work in certain situations (ie pavlov's dogs) and I think the constructivists have shown likewise. I could similarly envision situations where either approach would fail.
To me that implies that since there is no sure-fire way to take an either-or approach, the most logical choice would be a third option: a contextualist approach, where learning is designed based on taking all of the relevant factors into consideration.
I have been involved in a fair amount of discussions over the past few days, and the thing I keep coming back to is that from what I am hearing, Constructivism and Behaviorism, as philosophies have to do with how the proponents of these ideas believe that students learn, and this therefore affects how a given teacher will teach, or a given instructional designer will design.
In a nutshell, the Constructivists believe that learning happens in an individual as he or she experiences reality and constructs knowledge based on their own interpretations of what happens in their environment. Behaviorism, on the other hand, posits that learning is a change in behavior prompted by the environment.
The two theories are at odds because the constructivists believe that reality is open to interpretation and we, as individuals, develop a mental model to deal with reality, whereas the behaviorists believe that reality is what it is and we learn the rules for interacting with reality (mostly through observable trial and error).
This apparently has huge implications for how teaching is done, since a constructivist will employ different techniques when teaching than a behaviorist would.
In reality, I think that there are contexts that can dictate either approach or both. These constraints are determined largely by the environment in which the learning takes place, the participants, economic realities and several other factors.
The early behaviorists did plenty of experimentation that proves that their techniques work in certain situations (ie pavlov's dogs) and I think the constructivists have shown likewise. I could similarly envision situations where either approach would fail.
To me that implies that since there is no sure-fire way to take an either-or approach, the most logical choice would be a third option: a contextualist approach, where learning is designed based on taking all of the relevant factors into consideration.
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