The Value of Ideas: Problems Versus Possibilities in Learning

Abstract

The advantages of involving students in authentic problem-solving activity is one thing about which all contemporary learning theorists agree. Such an approach fits well with the strategy-based performance model advanced by information processors, the impasse or perturbation learning model advanced by cognitive constructivists, and the socially mediated apprenticeship model advanced by the cultural anthropologists. Despite its pedagogical popularity, a focus on practical problem solving is subject to criticism because it downplays the transformative role of experience in education; the tendency in this approach is to define the world in negative terms, as a series of obstacles or impediments to be overcome. In the alternative view presented in this article, termed idea-based social constructivism, the focus is less on problems and more on the possibilities inherent in a given situation.