Is there more to learning than social constructivism?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi37.1777Keywords:
cognitive load, social constructivism, learning development, sage on the stageAbstract
Social constructivism (SC) entails a view of learning which involves socially and culturally situated practices, alongside a view of knowledge as constructed, especially in dialogue or collaboration with others (Shay, 2008, p.596). This often leads to pedagogies which minimize expert guidance and emphasise interaction and knowledge construction between learners. As an explanation of how we understand the world it has much to offer, and it has influenced teaching and learning in higher education extensively. This includes the Educational and Learning Development literature, with SC named constituting an important influence on Academic Literacies theory and therefore likely on LD practice. It’s important to challenge and test such dominant narratives in any community, if only to strengthen our understanding and practice. However, there seems to be a limited amount of such challenge in LD discourse. Usefully, other sub-fields of education provide alternatives. Researchers from science education, for example, have investigated constructivist-inspired forms of minimally guided learning such as discovery, project-based, problem-based and inquiry learning. Their conclusions are striking. Matthews (2012) cites work which ‘reviewed an extensive body of research on constructivist [mainly discovery] pedagogy and concluded that it did not work, and where it did work, it worked in virtue of departing from constructivist principles’ (Mayer, 2004; in Matthews, 2012, p. 10). Such critics point to approaches informed by cognitive science, employed in ways which can combine more strongly and minimally guided approaches and thus improve learning outcomes for students. This raises some important questions:
- These scientists are skeptical of SC-informed pedagogy. Shouldn't we at least be looking into this?
- Cognitive Load Theory was described as 'the single most important thing for teachers to know' in compulsory UK education some years ago (Wiliam, 2017). Is it weird that it's rarely discussed in Learning Development?
- How can we maintain a channel for recent findings in fields like cognitive science and neuroscience to inform our understanding of education, and specifically of Learning Development?
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