Constructivism constructionism confusion

Constructivism Constructionism

Confusion

Sherrie Lee

Postgraduate Global Connections

5 August 2015

University of Waikato, Faculty of Education

The same?

Textbook definition:

“Constructionism (also referred to as constructivism) is an

ontological position that asserts that social phenomenon and

their meanings are continually being accomplished by social

actors. It implies that social phenomena and categories are

not only produced through social interaction but they are in a

constant state of revision.” (Bryman, 2012)

How do we understand Constructivism and Constructionism?

Versions of constructivist philosophy (Schwandt, 1994, 2007)

Constructivists believe that “knowledge and truth are created, not discovered by

mind. They emphasize the pluralistic and plastic character of reality—pluralistic in

the sense that reality is expressible in a variety of symbol and language systems;

plastic in the sense that reality is stretched and shaped to fit purposeful acts of

intentional human agents” (Schwandt, 1994, p. 236)

Radical constructivism (von Glaserfeld, 1989, 1991): “knowledge is not a particular

kind of product (i.e., a representation) that exists independent of the knower, but

an activity or process” (Schwandt, 1994, p. 239)

Social constructionism: “the terms by which the world is understood are social

artifacts, products of historically situated interchanges among people”(Gergen,

1985, p. 267, cited in Schwandt, 1994, p. 240)


Individual versus social (Crotty, 1998; Young & Collins, 2004)

“Constructivism proposes each individual mentally constructs the world of

experience through cognitive processes.” / Radical, moderate, social

constructivists (Young & Collin, 2004, p. 375)

“Generally put, social constructionism contends that knowledge is

sustained by social processes and that knowledge and social action go

together. It is less interested, or not at all interested, in the cognitive

processes that accompany knowledge.” (Young & Collin, 2004, p. 376)



Constructivism: epistemology focused exclusively on ‘the meaning-making

activity of the individual mind’

Constructionism: focus includes ‘the collective generation [and transmission]

of meaning’

“Constructivism … points up the unique experience of each of us. It suggests

that each one’s way of making sense of the world is as valid and worthy of

respect as any others, thereby tending to scotch any hint of a critical spirit.

On the other hand, social constructionism emphasises the hold our culture

has on us; it shapes the way in which we see things (event the way in which

we feel things!) and gives us a quite definite view of the world”

(Crotty, 1998, p. 58)

Constructivism

Radical constructivists (von Glaserfeld, 1995) interpret that it

is the individual mind that constructs reality.

Moderate constructivists (Kelly, 1955; Piaget, 1969)

acknowledge that individual constructions take place within a

systematic relationship to the external world.

Social constructivists (Bruner, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978)

recognize that influences on individual construction are

derived from and preceded by social relationships.

(Young & Collin, 2004, p. 375-376)

Constructionism

Constructionism is the view that “all knowledge, and therefore

all meaningful reality as such, is contingent upon human

practices, being constructed in and out of interaction between

human beings and their world, and developed and transmitted

within an essentially social context” (Crotty, 1998, p. 42)

Constructionism

Weak social constructionism

• not everything is a social construct

• focuses on how our experience of some particular object or idea is

socially constructed

• does not deny reality in the ordinary commonplace sense of that term

• E.g. writing a social history of the notion of mental illness reveals how it

is culturally produced, uncovers its ideology, and still maintains that it is

real

(Schwandt, 2007, p. 40)

Constructionism

Strong social constructionism

• denies any ontology of the real whatsoever

• everything in the world and about the world is nothing but a

sociolinguistic product of historically situated interactions (“linguistic or

semantic idealism”)

• radical perspectivalism: “our experience, thought, and speech about

reality and/or reality itself are a function of the particular conceptual

scheme or framework (e.g., culture, form of life, language game,

paradigm) in which we live and that different conceptual schemes yield

incommensurable understandings of experience and reality”

(Schwandt, 2007, p. 40)

References

Bryman, A. (2012). Social research methods (4th ed.). New York, NY: Oxford

University Press.

Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research. London, United Kingdom:

Sage.

Schwandt, T. A. (1994). Constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human inquiry.

In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research:

Theories and issues (pp. 221–259). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Schwandt, T. A. (2007). The Sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry (3rd ed.).

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Young, R. A., & Collin, A. (2004). Introduction: Constructivism and social

constructionism in the career field. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 64(3), 373–

388. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2003.12.005