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

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Ultimately, then, Von Glasersfeld’s position is a kind of co-ordinated solipsism which gives rise to relativistic
interpretations. Even though it seems the opposite of cognitivist structuralism, the two interpretations
sometimes go very well together: namely, when ‘’facts’’ are considered a totally different
category from ‘’values’’. This opens the possibility that people (tendentially and ideally) agree on facts,
but value them differently without a possibility of co-ordination: the ultimate argument is ‘’this is how
I see it’’.
Somewhere between these two extremes is ‘’social constructivism’’. As its name suggests, the principle
here is that knowledge is a social construction. This is true on two levels: of the developing person
(ontogenesis) and of the developing social group or society (sociogenesis). It is not the individual as
in radical constructivism, but the social group which decides on what is to be considered a valid interpretation
of the world. In this case, there is no boundary between ‘’facts’’ and ‘’values’’: interpretations
are always value-laden. Also, as in radical constructivism, there are virtually no limits on what can be a
valid interpretation, as the principle is that we cannot know the world as it is. Each culture thus can
construct its own world view. In ontogenesis, this means that learning does not occur in direct relation
with reality (as Piaget supposes) but in social situations; thus, learning is close to socialisation,
except that learners still have to build their own interpretative schemas.
Cultural-historical constructivism, finally, rejects the relativism inherent in radical and social constructivism.
In sociogenesis, cultural instruments or artefacts, among which is conceptual knowledge, are
produced and improved in joint activity (which is directed at satisfying real needs) in the real world,
with the help of previously developed and culturally transmitted artefacts. There is no immediate or
objective knowledge of the world, nor is there a formal logic hardwired in human brains (as Piaget
supposes), which would guarantee the adequacy of knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge is not
constructed arbitrarily: our insights are founded in the real actions of people with the help of cultural
instruments in which the experiences of earlier generations have been materialised, and can thus be
given on. Our experiences are always already structured by the existing instruments, so direct access
to reality is not possible, but reality poses limits on what we can experience and on the interpretations
we can construct: it ‘’resists’’ some interpretations. In ontogenesis, the developing child does not
learn from direct experience in the world; its experiences are always already mediated by other people
and by cultural artefacts (including other people’s construction of the world). The social environments
makes these mediating artefacts available, both accidentally and in a structured way in schools
(here, the main type of artefact is conceptual knowledge). It is learning to use such mediating devices
which drives individual development - not the other way round as Piaget supposes. In this sense, learning
is always a social process: other people are always present, if not bodily, then represented by
their artefacts: reading a book in solitude is an eminently social process.
Learning, however, in this view is not purely adaptive socialisation to an already existing social environment.
To be able to really use a cultural instrument, the learners have to adapt it to their own possibilities
and preferences, and the other way round: the instrument has to become a part of the
person itself. Thus, for instance, you can still write even if you have no writing instrument available;
and our thinking is, in early development, totally transformed by learning to use language as a thinking
instrument. (Language does not just communicate our ideas to others; our ideas are structured
by the processes of language themselves.) Learning, then, is not something purely cognitive; it is
based in (affect driven) motivation to learn and has affective consequences. This way of thinking
about the relation between development and learning is typical for the ‘’sociocultural’’ school or cultural
activity theory, which is based in the work of Vygotsky, a contemporary of Piaget.’
Hirumi (2002) geeft handzame overzichten van uitgangspunten en praktische consequenties van het
cognitief-constructivisme en het sociaal-constructivisme (zie ook Bereiter, 2002; Shayer & Adey, 2002;
Duffy & Jonassen, 1992; Jonassen et al., 1999; Jonassen & Land, 2000; het overzicht van Jörg et al.,
2001; de interessante schets die Donmoyer, 2001, geeft van de ontwikkelingen in de laatste veertig
jaar van ‘research on teaching’ en ‘educationalal research’; Bernstein, 1990, vooral hoofdstuk 2 ‘Social
class and pedagogic practice’).