Implication of constructivism in science education
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Description
Science Education is now an established field within Education, and worldwide has its own journals, conferences, university departments and so forth.[2] Although a diverse field, a major influence on its development was research considered to be undertaken from a constructivist perspective on learning, and supporting approaches to teaching that themselves became labelled constructivist. Thus, this constructivism was largely of a psychological flavour, often drawing on the work of Jean Piaget,[3][4] David Ausubel,[5] Robert M. Gagné [6] and Jerome Bruner.[7] One influential group of science education researchers were also heavily influenced by George Kelly (psychologist)'s Personal Construct Theory.[8] The work of Lev Vygotsky [9][10] (since being championed in the West by Jerome Bruner) has also been increasingly influential.
These workers from psychology informed the first generation of science education researchers. Active research groups developed in centres like the University of Waikato (Aotearoa/New Zealand), University of Leeds (UK) and University of Surrey (UK), with a strong interest in students' ideas in science (formed before, or during instruction) as these were recognised as being highly influential on future learning, and so whether canonical scientific would be learnt. This work, sometimes labelled the 'alternative conceptions movement' was motivated by a series of influential publications on children's ideas in science and their implications for learning (and so for how teaching should be planned to take them into account). Whilst a range of influential papers could be cited it has been suggested that a number of seminar contributions [11][12][13][14][15] in effect set out the commitments, or 'hard core' of a constructivist research programme into the learning and teaching of science.[16][17] The perspective was also the focus of a number of books aimed at the science education community - researchers and teachers.[18][19][20]
These papers presented learning as process of personal sense making, and an iterative matter such that what is learnt was channelled by existing knowledge and understanding (whether canonical or alternative), and teaching as needing to take learners' existing ideas into account in teaching. The research programme soon amounted to thousands of studies on aspects of students' (of different ages and educational levels, from different countries) thinking and learning in science topics.[21]
Criticisms
There have been a wide range of criticisms of constructivist work in science, including strong criticism from philosophical perspectives.[22][23] Such criticisms have done little to stem the influence of the perspective, perhaps because they tend not to refer to the core tenets of constructivism as an approach based on learning theory and research from cognitive science.[17]