Leraar worden:'under construction'? - Open Universiteit Nederland

Wardekker (ongepubliceerd) onderscheidt vier vormen van constructivisme. Ik citeer hem uitgebreid
om een aantal nuances te laten zien.‘(...) it is recognised in several places that there are different interpretations
of the concept of ‘’constructivism’’, but the general tendency here is to speak of constructivism
as a whole. In a sense, this is right: there is a common ground to all forms of constructivism,
which is that the learning individual actively constructs for itself an image of the world, instead of
adopting it passively. This is why we speak of ‘’acquisition’’ rather than ‘’transmission’’ models.
Nowadays, only a minority of psychologists and educationalists do not accept this Piaget-based thesis.
The clear consequence for education is that pupils should be allowed to work independently on
constructing their own image of the world – a way of thinking related to child-centered education
theory. However, this raises questions about what will guarantee the quality of the construction they
arrive at. On this point, and on the question how the construction process actually works, both the
general principle and the educational consequences can be interpreted in totally different ways...’
Wardekker vervolgt:‘On one side of the spectrum, there are the ‘’cognitivist constructionists’’, also
sometimes called ‘’trivial constructivism’’. They are the most direct followers of Piaget. In their view, we
should differentiate between accidental and systematic differences in the individual constructions of
reality. The systematic differences occur because children in different stages of their cognitive development
think in different stage-related ways. Education has to take this into account by allowing for
the stage children are in, and not trying to teach them things they cannot yet understand. The differences
can be interpreted as specific logical errors, which are systematically corrected as development
progresses. First the child thinks according to its own subjective logic, later according to rules
suggested by others, and finally according to the formal logic rules that govern the world as it is.
Because of the innate structure of the brain, both the progression of stages and the end point of
development are in principle the same for every person, ultimately (and, as Piaget admits, in many
cases only tendentially) leading to a world view which is free of logical-mathematical errors – a process
called decentring. (The development of the brain thus is pre-programmed in terms of its stages
and direction, but it does require input from the outside world to take place at all.) It may still contain
factual errors, but these are accidental. This is where education can help: by providing opportunities
for experience with the world, it stimulates children to come to the right interpretation of the world
sooner and more completely. The newest version of cognitivist constructionism combines these ideas
with the stimulation of metacognition. Now, it is not so much building a correct worldview which is
the educational task, as it necessarily rests on changeable and questionable knowledge. It is therefore
more the capacity and skill of (re)building a cognitive map (schema) which has to be learned. This
consists of a combination of cognitive (reading, interpreting etc.) and metacognitive (monitoring your
own work) skills. The Dutch psychologist Boekaerts for instance, one of the driving forces of a recent
innovation in upper secondary education in which this ‘’self-regulation’’ skill is central, suggests that
monitoring your motivation to carry out an assigned learning task is one of the most important learning
skills. In this way, motivation becomes something that you can ‘’switch yourself on’’: your task is
to motivate yourself to keep working on the task as formulated by the curriculum. The effect of such
an interpretation is that pupils are made responsible for their own efforts, without having any influence
on the tasks they are assigned. Also, it now becomes possible (contrary to child-centred education)
to set the pace and the specific objectives of education centrally, as in traditional education. A clear
difference with traditional forms is that the teacher is more of an attendant and guide for pupils. At
the other extreme of the spectrum we find ‘’radical constructivism’’ as defended by Von Glasersfeld.
According to him, nothing can guarantee that eventually everyone will arrive at the same mental
schema or construct of reality. We cannot know reality objectively, and everybody at least perceives it
differently. Our schemas are our very own, and the best we can do is to coordinate them by talking to
each other so they may become more alike. This possibility is enhanced by the information schools
impart - the school as an institution of socialisation - but even then a strictly individual kernel
remains, for these constructions are not just cognitive, but also affective and emotional ones.
Leraar worden: ‘under construction’?
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