3.4: Constructivism

Learning Objectives

1. Explain the key principles of constructivist learning theory.
2. Compare and contrast the cognitive development theories of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky.
3. Describe Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory and Thelen’s dynamic systems theory as constructivist frameworks that emphasize the role of context and interrelated systems in child development.

Constructivism

Constructivism is an umbrella for theories of learning based on the idea that learners do not acquire knowledge and understanding by passively perceiving it. Instead, learners need to interact with it through direct experience and social engagement. Some notable constructivists include:

• Jean Piaget- Theory of Cognitive Development
• Lev Vygotksy- Sociocultural Theory
• Urie Bronfenbrenner- Ecological Systems Theory
• Esther Thelen- Dynamic Systems Theory

Bronfenbrenner's theory could also be classified as Behaviorism, depending on the perspective taken, as it has overlap within both umbrella terms.

Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is one of the most influential theorists of cognitive development. Piaget was inspired to explore children’s ability to think and reason by watching his own children’s development. He was one of the first to recognize and map out how children’s thought differs from those of adults. His interest in this area began when he was asked to test the IQ of children, and he noticed a pattern in their incorrect answers. He believed that children’s intellectual skills change over time through maturation. Children of differing ages interpret the world differently.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Jean Piaget. Image is in the public domain.

Piaget believed our desire to understand the world comes from a need for cognitive equilibrium. This is an agreement or balance between what we sense in the outside world and what we know in our minds. If we experience something that we cannot understand, we try to restore the balance by either changing our thoughts or by altering the experience to fit into what we do understand. Perhaps you meet someone who is very different from anyone you know. How do you make sense of this person? You might use them to establish a new category of people in your mind, or you might think about how they are similar to someone else.

A schema or schemes are categories of knowledge. They are like mental boxes of concepts. A child has to learn many concepts. They may have a scheme for “under” and “soft” or “running” and “sour”. All of these are schemas. Our efforts to understand the world around us lead us to develop new schemas and to modify old ones.

Video	Video Description and Text Link
	A schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information. Jean Piaget, who coined the term, argued that we construct our experiences into schemata so we can make sense of the world. Piaget's Schema: Accomodation and Assimilation of New Information by Sprouts Text link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...&v=EYbCE1udazw

One way to make sense of new experiences is to focus on how they are similar to what we already know. This is assimilation. So the person we meet who is very different may be understood as being “sort of like my brother” or “his voice sounds a lot like yours.” Or a new food may be assimilated when we determine that it tastes like chicken!

Another way to make sense of the world is to change our minds. We can make a cognitive accommodation to this new experience by adding a new schema. This food is unlike anything I’ve tasted before. I now have a new category of foods that are bittersweet in flavor, for instance. This is accommodation. Do you accommodate or assimilate more frequently? Children accommodate more frequently as they build new schemas. Adults tend to look for similarity in their experience and assimilate. They may be less inclined to think “outside the box.” Piaget suggested different ways of understanding that are associated with maturation. He divided this into four stages:

Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Name of Stage	Description of Stage
Sensorimotor Stage	During the sensorimotor stage, children rely on using their senses and motor skills. From birth until about age 2, the infant learns about objects by tasting, smelling, touching, hearing, and moving them around. This is a real hands-on type of knowledge.
Preoperational Stage	In the preoperational stage, children from ages 2 to 7 become able to think about the world using symbols. A symbol is something that stands for something else. The use of language, whether in the form of words or gestures, facilitates understanding and communication about the world. This is the hallmark of preoperational intelligence and occurs in early childhood. However, these children are preoperational or pre-logical. They still do not understand how the physical world operates. They may, for instance, fear that they will go down the drain if they sit at the front of the bathtub, even though they are too big.
Concrete Operational	Children in the concrete operational stage, between the ages of 7 and 11, develop the ability to think logically about the physical world. Middle childhood is a time of understanding concepts such as size, distance, and the constancy of matter, as well as cause-and-effect relationships. A child knows that a scrambled egg is still an egg and that 8 ounces of water is still 8 ounces no matter what shape of glass contains it.
Formal Operational	During the formal operational stage, children, around age 12, acquire the ability to think logically about both concrete and abstract events. The teenager who has reached this stage can consider possibilities and contemplate ideas about situations that have never been directly encountered. A more abstract understanding of religious ideas, morals, ethics, and abstract principles, such as freedom and dignity, can be considered.

Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory

Piaget has been criticized for overemphasizing the role that physical maturation plays in cognitive development and in underestimating the role that culture and interaction (or experience) plays in cognitive development. Looking across cultures reveals considerable variation in what children are able to do at various ages. Piaget may have underestimated what children are capable of, given the right circumstances. ³³

Piaget's Stages at Work

Using visual aids and photo representations of daily schedules, transitions, classroom rules, learning activities, etc., all stem from Piaget's thoughts about how children think in the pre-operational stage.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Classroom rules visual aid. Image by Heather Carter is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Main Points To Note About Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget, one of the most influential cognitive theorists, believed that

• Understanding is motivated by trying to balance what we sense in the world and what we know in our minds.
• Understanding is organized through creating categories of knowledge. When presented with new knowledge, we may add new schema or modify existing ones.

Children’s understanding of the world changes as their cognitive skills mature through four stages: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage.

Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Russian psychologist who wrote in the early 1900s but whose work was discovered in the United States in the 1960s and became more widely known in the 1980s. Vygotsky differed from Piaget in that he believed a person not only has a set of abilities, but also a set of potential abilities that can be realized with proper guidance from others. His sociocultural theory emphasizes the importance of culture and interaction in the development of cognitive abilities. He believed that through guided participation, known as scaffolding, with a teacher or a capable peer, a child can learn cognitive skills within a certain range, known as the zone of proximal development.³⁴ He believed that development occurred first through children’s immediate social interactions, and then moved to the individual level as they began to internalize their learning.³⁵

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Lev Vygotsky. Image by The Vigotsky Project is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Have you ever taught a child to perform a task? Maybe it was brushing their teeth or preparing food. Chances are, you spoke to them and described what you were doing while you demonstrated the skill, letting them work along with you throughout the process. You assisted them when they seemed to need it, but once they knew what to do, you stood back and let them go. This is scaffolding and can be seen demonstrated throughout the world. Educators have also adopted this approach to teaching. Rather than assessing students on what they are doing, they should be understood in terms of what they are capable of doing with the proper guidance. You can see how Vygotsky would be very popular with modern-day educators.³⁷

Main Points to Note About Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Vygotsky concentrated on the child’s interactions with peers and adults. He believed that the child was an apprentice, learning through sensitive social interactions with more skilled peers and adults.

ZPD and Scaffolding at Work

Video

Video Description and Text Link

It can be super frustrating to learn something new! We’ve all been there. When we support our children in their zone of proximal development, then optimal learning occurs! A big part of staying in their zone of proximal development means we let them figure it out a bit and then offer support when they are stuck. We don’t expect children to learn or figure something out that is too difficult for them and also we want there to be a little bit of a challenge or else they are not actually learning anything. The Zone of Proximal Development by The Peaceful Sleeper Text link: https://youtu.be/JONHiVXrx3s

There is a lot of modern pedagogy in working with young children centered around Piaget's and Vygotsky's work. One example of utilizing a child's zone of proximal development and scaffolding is learning to write.

1. Writing starts at birth with pre-writing skills, including grasping and eye-hand coordination.
2. Eventually, we encourage children to utilize writing in intentional ways that represent something, known as emerging writing.
3. Transitional writing is characterized by a one-to-one relationship between the letters and sounds represented in children’s writing. For example, words like ’people’ could be spelled ’pepl’. Even though children’s writing has now reached a level where it may be read by others, providing conventional writing is still very important in writing progress. Children will learn through comparison that many letters have different sounds and that some are silent. At the same time, children will start to notice and learn about the use of punctuation and capital letters.
4. From there, we introduce various activities that encourage children to use their hands and work their fine-motor muscles to support writing such as sensory play, art, blocks, puzzles, woodworking, and more.

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Writing in preschool. Image by Heather Carter is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Comparing Piaget and Vygotsky

Vygotsky concentrated more on the child’s immediate social and cultural environment and their interactions with adults and peers. While Piaget saw the child as actively discovering the world through individual interactions with it, Vygotsky saw the child as more of an apprentice, learning through a social environment of others who had more experience and were sensitive to the child’s needs and abilities.³⁸

Like Vygotsky’s, Bronfenbrenner looked at the social influences on learning and development.

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Model

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) offers us one of the most comprehensive theories of human development. Bronfenbrenner studied Freud, Erikson, Piaget, and other learning theorists and believed that all of those theories could be enhanced by adding the dimension of context. What is being taught and how society interprets situations depend on who is involved in the life of a child and on when and where a child lives.

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Urie Bronfenbrenner. Image by Marco Vicente González is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model explains the direct and indirect influences on an individual’s development.

Table \(\PageIndex{4}\): Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Model

Name of System	Description of System
Microsystems	Microsystems impact a child directly. These are the people with whom the child interacts, such as parents, peers, and teachers. The relationship between individuals and those around them needs to be considered. For example, to appreciate what is going on with a student in math, the relationship between the student and teacher should be known.
Mesosystems	Mesosystems are interactions between those surrounding the individual. The relationship between parents and schools, for example, will indirectly affect the child.
Exosystem	Larger institutions such as the mass media or the healthcare system are referred to as the exosystem. These have an impact on families, peers, and schools that operate under policies and regulations found in these institutions.
Macrosystems	We find cultural values and beliefs in what we refer to as macrosystems. These larger ideals and expectations inform institutions that will ultimately impact the individual.
Chronosystem	All of this happens in a historical context referred to as the chronosystem. Cultural values change over time, as do policies of educational institutions or governments in certain political climates. Development occurs at a point in time.

For example, to understand a student in math, we can’t simply look at that individual and the challenges they face directly with the subject. We need to examine the interactions that occur between the teacher and the child. Perhaps the teacher needs to make modifications as well. The teacher may be responding to regulations set by the school, such as new expectations for students in math or time constraints that interfere with the teacher’s ability to instruct. These new demands may be a response to national efforts to promote math and science, which were deemed important by political leaders at a particular time in history due to relations with other countries.

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. Image by Ian Joslin is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model challenges us to go beyond the individual if we want to understand human development and promote improvements.⁴¹

Video	Video Description and Text Link
	A brief overview of Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory. Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory by Rachelle Tannebaum Text link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV4E05BnoI8

Main Points to Note About Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model

After studying all of the prior theories, Bronfenbrenner added an important element of context to the discussion of influences on human development.

• He believed that the people involved in a child’s life, and where and when they live, are important considerations.
• He created a model of nested systems that influence the child (and are influenced by the child), including microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, macrosystems, and chronosystems.

Esther Thelen's Dynamic Systems Theory

Esther Thelen's (1931-2004) research focused on how babies learn to walk and interact with their surroundings. What emerged was the Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). DST is a framework for understanding how internal systems behave and change over time. Additionally, all aspects of the system, or in early childhood development, interact. The theory posits that development is non-linear in nature, but critical changes in one system can affect the others. Dynamic Systems Theory helped prompt the understanding that we need to teach and consider the "whole child" because learning and development across all domains are interrelated.

Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Esther Thelen with test subject. Image is in the public domain via the IU Digital Library Program and Indiana University Office of University Archives and Records Management.

References, Contributors and Attributions

33. Lecture Transcript: Developmental Theories by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (modified by Jennifer Paris)

Exploring Cognition by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0

34. Exploring Cognition by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0

35. Children’s Development by Ana R. Leon is licensed under CC BY 4.0

37. Exploring Cognition by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0

38. Children’s Development by Ana R. Leon is licensed under CC BY 4.0

41. Children’s Development by Ana R. Leon is licensed under CC BY 4.