Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Where Is the Mind Supposed to Be? 603
passive role, yields at best impressionistic data. It takes active intervention by the mind to turn
this information into the clear and distinct ideas that he most associated with the intellect. Piaget
built on these ideas in the key distinction he drew between what he called “figurative” (sensory)
and “operative” (logical) knowledge. The latter consists of logical rules like the ability to look at
something from more than one perspective—to realize that one can simultaneously be a brother
to one member of the family and a son to another. Individuals use their logic, which becomes
more sophisticated with age, to create knowledge structures; the latter, reflecting the development
of logic, become more coherent or integrated over time.
Empiricists take a different stance toward the relationship between sense and intellect, viewing
the two processes as distinct but more equal than the rationalists. Sensory input helps define
particular objects—particular dogs or trees, for example. The role of the intellect is to sort
through this particular data to find patterns, ways that one particular object resembles another.
The basis for this resemblance is tested against promising additional candidates. If it is a key
attribute, like having paws as opposed to brown-ness for a dog, it will continue to discriminate
between members and nonmembers of the category. The rules that define like things become
our concepts, the basic building blocks of knowledge. Concepts, in turn, are related through
propositions. Cognitive scientists accept the most important premise of empiricism, the notion
that information processing is inductive in nature. Mental activity flows internally from specific
input to more general structures (schemas or frames). The process of identifying regularity in
the environment, they believe, is made easier by the fact that information is packaged in ways
that make this identification easier. Being about the size of a hand and having feathers are two
attributes of bird-ness that covary with some regularity.
One assumption that information processors share with radical constructivists is that the internal
processes that produce knowledge are deliberate; they cannot be turned on or off by someone else.
This is not to say that the processes are not responsive to environment conditions. On the contrary,
our minds become more active when we encounter difficulty or impasse, especially if our current
ways of construing the situation appear not to be helpful. Problems that get in the way of things
we want to accomplish become the impetus for restructuring or repatterning our experience.
While radical constructivists and information processors view the process of restructuring or
repatterning as primarily an individual event, sociocultural and symbolic interactionalists do not.
They do, however, buy into the notion that knowledge is instrumental—that it helps us overcome
difficulties or, stated minimally, that it allows us to more effectively or efficiently reach our
goals—but they reject the notion that there is such a thing as individual problems or even goals.
The latter are culturally defined, even to the extent that there are fundamental differences between
“school” mathematical problems and “out of school” mathematical problems.
The knowledge that allows us to solve these kinds of problems is also culturally defined
and, more important, socially acquired. Furthermore, this knowledge is often less “taught” than
“caught” as we work alongside more knowledgeable others in an effort to overcome difficulty
or reach a goal (e.g., being able to go to recess in the case of school mathematical problems).
Social constructivists, though they focus more on language than procedure, share the premise
that teaching is “enculturation” and that knowledge plays an instrumental role in this regard. One
learns to talk about phenomena in science or mathematics in disciplinarily acceptable ways, they
argue, because it is associated with good things—good grades, good interactions with teachers,
and more facile talk about related phenomena.
What is remarkable about these various constructivisms is not how they differ but what they
share in common. In all cases, the teacher’s role is more the proverbial “guide on the side” as
opposed to the traditional “sage on the stage.” In all cases, knowledge is seen as instrumental, as a
means to an end. In all cases, the way to get students to engage with knowledge is to make sure that
they see it as instrumental. This, in turn, means that the teacher must get students, individually or