Constructivism and E-Learning: Balancing between the Individual and Social Levels of Cognition.

Abstract

In current literature, there are many interpretations of constructivism – from the radical views individualistic cognition to the other side of the continuum where mind is simply social in orientation. In essence, we argue for a balanced and pragmatic view of the mind bridging both the individual and social levels of cognition – balancing between Vygotskian and Piagetian views. From such a perspective, we propose the design of e-learning environments where both personalization of learning (individual) and affiliations to the community of learners (social) are complemented. Both a collective and individual understanding of knowledge and meanings are important. Introduction Constructivism has been a dominant epistemology gradually replacing the objectivist and positivist paradigm in the last one to two decades. Constructivism, like objectivism, holds that there is a real world that we experience, however, the argument is that meaning is imposed by our interpretation (or meaning-making) of the world. There are many ways to structure and interpret the world, and there are many meanings and perspectives for any event or concept. Hence the constructivist view is opposed to the one correct objectivist meaning that we strive for (Duffy & Jonassen, 1992). The purpose of this paper is to clarify the main ‘faces’ of constructivism and to formulate a possible working constructivist framework for e-learning. Having balanced the individual and social perspectives to constructivism, we recognized that e-learning environments should be situated in both the social community of teaching practice and in the individual minds of students. Constructivism – Balancing the Individual and Social Perspectives The two dominant roots of constructivism are the radical constructivist and the socialcultural views. Arising from Piaget and von Glasersfeld is the radical constructivist view where learning is defined as a predominantly individual self-organization of the mind – an active cognitive reorganization through processes such as assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium. The social-cultural view, on the other hand, argues that mind is a by-product of external culturally organized phenomena such as practices in the context of artifacts, tools, and language. Such a view is attributed to Vygotsky, Leont’ev and other Marxist orientations. Recent notions such as cognitive apprenticeship, legitimate peripheral participation, or the negotiation of meaning in stipulated construction zones are notions arising from the social-cultural perspective. It is important to realize that proponents of the above two views did not deny the presence of either the social or individual dimensions. For example, although von