Constructivism Examined

Author(s): Richard Fox

Source: Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 23-35
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2001

Constructivism Examined

RICHARD FOX

ABSTRACT In this paper I examine constructivism as a view of learni

to dominate educational debates about learning in the field of teacher
major claims of a variety of constructivist theories are considered and f
wanting, in that they either differ little from common sense empiricist vi
misleading and incomplete views of human learning, with consequ
implications for teaching in classrooms.

INTRODUCTION

Constructivism now appears to dominate the view of learning articulated in the

educational literature, at least of the Anglo-Saxon academic world, and especially in the
domain of teacher education. Yet it is perhaps as much a guiding myth as a testable
psychological theory, a general view rather than a single clearly stated set of claims.
Existing in many versions, it has become a somewhat uncritically accepted textbook
account of learning (Eggan & Kauchek, 1994; Fosnot, 1996; Woolfolk, 1996), often
articulated in opposition to simplified and even distorted 'straw man' versions of
behaviourism, nativism and information processing theory. In such contexts it is in
danger of becoming a general term of approbation with but little content and an
incoherent underlying epistemology. The aim of this paper is to review the principal
claims of a variety of constructivist accounts of learning, as they appear in a variety of
textbooks and papers in the field of teacher education, and to argue that, except where
constructivism slips into making extreme and implausible epistemological claims, it
turns out to have relatively little to say which is distinctive and not already implied by
common sense, broadly empiricist, accounts of learning (Strike, 1987). What it does
have to offer, as a positive contribution to debates on education is, however, also
considered. It will also be argued that the popularity of constructivism, at least in its
more unsophisticated versions, stems largely from its being a view that is articulated
and understood in opposition, or reaction, to naive psychology and, or, naive episte-
mology. That is, students, realising the improbability of their initial unexamined and
naive views of teaching and learning, take up constructivism as a better alternative, but
then tend to make characteristic mistakes of their own.

THE CENTRAL CLAIMS OF CONSTRUCTIVISM SUMMARISED

Constructivism is basically a metaphor for learning, likening the a

edge to a process of building or construction. Like all such metaph
has particular strengths and weaknesses. Claimed as both a 'paradig
(Fosnot, 1996), constructivism has also been described as 'akin to a secular religion'

ISSN 0305-4985 print; ISSN 1465-3915 online/01/010023-13 ? 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/3054980020030583

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24 Oxford Review of Education

(Phillips, 1995). It is indeed a broad church, including variants of Piagetian construc-

tivism (Piaget, 1969; Liben, 1987; Adey & Shayer, 1994) neo-Vygotskian construc-
tivism (Wertsch, 1985; Brown & Reeve, 1987; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), Feuerstein's
mediated learning (Sharon, 1994), radical constructivism (von Glasersfeld, 1996) and
social constructivism in various shades and hues (Rogoff, 1990; Mercer, 1995; Fosnot,
1996). Its varieties have been reviewed and compared by Strike (1987), Ernest (1994),
Prawat & Floden (1994), Phillips (1995) and Fox (1997), amongst others. Quite apart
from its position as the most favoured current view of learning and teaching in the
teacher education literature (Mayer, 1992; Sudzina, 1997), it has a long history as a
theory of perception and of memory (Bartlett, 1932; Neisser, 1967, Gregory, 1981,
Eysenck & Keane, 1995). As a theory of learning, its central claim is that (human)
knowledge is acquired through a process of active construction. This vague idea, itself
misleading and incomplete, can be developed in a number of ways that are not always
compatible with one another. Moreover, as the claims become more bold and distinc-
tive, they risk collapsing either into implausible philosophical positions or becoming
empirically too narrow, respecting some aspects and types of learning to the detriment
of others. My method will be to list a number of such claims and to comment critically
on each in turn.
The claims, which together are held to define constructivist views of learning, are firs
summarised en masse:

(1) Learning is an active process.

(2) Knowledge is constructed, rather than innate, or passively absorbed.
(3) Knowledge is invented not discovered.
(4a) All knowledge is personal and idiosyncratic.
(4b) All knowledge is socially constructed.
(5) Learning is essentially a process of making sense of the world.
(6) Effective learning requires meaningful, open-ended, challenging problems for
the learner to solve.

THE CLAIMS CRITICISED

(1) Learning is an Active Process

This, the most central and insistent claim of constructivism, seems

either misleading or untrue. Human beings, and animals in gene
acquire knowledge of their environments by acting upon the world
example by investigating habitats and by eating things); however, t
upon. We do things and we have things done to us; we act and we r
we can learn from both types of experience. Many simple forms of
conditioning consist of adaptive reactions, rather than actions. Thu
tation of the eye to changing levels of brightness, to conditioned (e.g. eye-blink)
responses and to the pervasive phenomena of orientation and habituation, there is a
continuum of adaptive responses which include instinctive processes and various
reactive forms of learning. Subliminal learning, perceptual recognition and implicit
learning (Claxton, 1997; Reber, 1993) have all now been minutely investigated and
documented and turn out to be extremely common and important to human adap-
tation. Why, then, should constructivism emphasise only one pole of human experi-
ence? I suggest that this follows from its own reactive origins, as a view of learning

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 Constructivism Examined 25

which was set up in opposition to a once dominant behaviourism and to traditionalist

views of education.

Thus an 'active' view of learning is often contrasted with behaviourist stimulu

response accounts in which organisms learn by being 'stimulated' and by 'responding
This is often described as a 'passive' view of the learner, although, in fact, man
animal-oriented behaviourists studied and wrote mainly about animals adapting
tively to their (severely controlled) surroundings, as in Thordike's cats attempting t
escape from puzzle boxes and Skinner's rats and pigeons pressing levers and keys
obtain various reinforcing consequences (e.g. Brown & Herrstein, 1975, chapter 2). In
behaviourist accounts, typically, clear logical distinctions are made between increasin
or withholding pleasurable or painful consequences, following either a response or th
inhibition of response. Piaget famously insisted on the fact that children, rather tha
being merely recipients of stimulation, frequently and typically investigate and act up
their world, whilst getting to know it. However, he was also well aware that they ofte
react, both to people and events. In the teacher education literature, however, there ha
been a further rhetorical reason for emphasising the active pole of learning, in the fo
of a frequently expressed opposition to traditionalist views of teaching and learning,
least as these have come to be described by their more progressive opponents.
Thus traditionalists are said to believe that teaching consists of telling, or instructin
and that the learner is treated as 'an empty vessel' to be (inertly) filled with knowledg
Since few constructivists, presumably, would want to rule out either listening or read
from the domain of possible ways of learning, both these are described as 'active
processes. In many ways this is reasonable; all cognition is active in the sense of
involving activity of the brain, but it is worth noting that in contrast to talking an
writing, listening and reading are relatively 'passive'. But, does anyone actually hold th
views ascribed to the 'traditionalist'? Few, surely, would seek to deny the importance o
some form of dialogue, if only question and answer, to teaching. It is rather th
traditionalists place a greater value on knowledge and its objective status, and on the
teacher as knowledgeable expert, as against learners and their existing knowledge and
immediate interests. Of course, such biases can be taken too far in either direction
(Pring, 1976). Too great an emphasis on either teacher or taught can lead to prescrip-
tions for teaching which either ignore the learner's needs or ignore the teacher as a
valuable, knowledgeable resource.
Naive views of learning may well be lop-sided in just such a way. It seems that many
lay people, if pressed to explain what they take learning to be about, resort to defining
it as memorisation. Learning is remembering. This most simple of views may then be
added to, or adapted, to become a view of learning as the acquisition of practical skills
and, further, as consisting of understanding some topic (Saljo, 1979a in Gibbs, 1981).
In so far as naive views of classroom teaching and learning amount to no more than
learning as remembering, or 'filling empty vessels' with facts, then of course the
constructivist story of the active learner comes as a welcome relief. But it does so whilst
subtly implying that remembering is not important, and that understanding concepts is
all there is to learning, neither of which is true.

(2) Knowledge is Constructed, Rather than Innate, or Passively Absorbed

This is an elaborated form of claim (1). Once again it highlights one aspect of learning,
namely the extent to which it is a matter of acquiring and elaborating concepts, in
opposition to innate, or maturational, influences on learning, and in opposition to

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26 Oxford Review of Education

implicit learning. Yet in so far as human beings have a distinctive cognitive system,
different from that of, say, seagulls or chimpanzees, it is virtually all inherited. Our
ability to perceive, to learn, to speak and to reason are all based on the innate capacities
of the evolved human nervous system. Piaget, of course, considered that maturation
was important, although difficult to study directly, and limited in its direct influence.
He wrote, for example, that:

Because the maturation of the nervous system is not completed until about the
fifteenth or sixteenth year, it therefore seems evident that it does play a
necessary role in the formation of mental structures, even though very little is
known about that role ... the maturation of the nervous system does no more
than open up possibilities, excluded until particular age levels are reached.
(Piaget, 1969, quoted in Light et al., 1991, pp. 11-12)

Other researchers suggest that genetic factors play a crucial role in developing percep-
tion and cognition, besides in language acquisition and developing motor skills (e.g.
Carey & Spelke, 1994). Besides contrasting the active learner with nativist views (a
contrast incidentally also made by all environmental empiricists) active learning is
contrasted by constructivists with 'passive absorption'. But the passive absorption of
elements of our experience is exactly what does seem to occur in contextual and
implicit learning (Claxton, 1997), so again the claim is one-sided and misleading.

(3) Knowledge is Invented not Discovered

This claim is not always explicitly stated by constructivist writers, but it lies at the very
heart of their rejection of empiricist and 'positivist' conceptions of learning. It is argued
that knowledge is not a copy or a true reflection of some independent reality (Rorty,
1979; von Glasersfeld in Fosnot, 1996) and that therefore we must adopt some more
subjective, idealist or at least conceptually relative view of human knowledge and of the
world we can know. Truth as objective correspondence to an independent reality
simply does not exist, on this view; we cannot have a 'God's eye' view of the world, or
a 'view from nowhere'. We always perceive and know the world from some sociocul-
tural, and historically situated, point of view. Hence, human knowledge is always to be
seen as a 'construct', a product of the human mind. But one can accept this argument
of 'conceptual relativism' without being driven by it into some subjective or relativistic
epistemology. We can accept that maps of the world, for example, are human construc-
tions, which make different assumptions and simplifications in representing the globe.
Different 2-D projections, for instance, notoriously produce different distortions of
land areas in different latitudes, and so forth. But we do not have to conclude from this
that there is no globe, no planet Earth, which is the subject of these imperfect human
representations. Similarly, our conceptual viewpoints are indeed limited but, being
views, they are precisely views of something, namely the world or some part of it. That
we cannot know 'things in themselves' or 'reality as it is' does not mean that we have
to give up our deep assumption of the existence of things in themselves, or of an
external world independent of human minds (Searle, 1995).
Indeed, the background assumption of external realism is crucial for our lives, our
learning and our discourse. It is not exactly that we have to believe in external realism;
it is simply that all actions, all communications, all investigations, presuppose its truth.
The exact nature of this reality, independent of our minds, may forever be beyond our
representations of it. But as a presupposition, external realism is virtually unavoidable.

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 Constructivism Examined 27

In Searle's words, it is the assumption that there is a way things are, which is qui
independent of our theories about the way things are. Alternative anti-realist position
can be invented, but it is not clear what difference they would make to our sense of th
contact between mind and world.

When constructivism starts down the road of conceptual relativism, it rejects na

empiricism or common sense realism, but it then reaches a fork in the track and h
difficulty avoiding either solipsism, or a kind of blinkered social consensualism. Th
solipsist position is defended, it seems, by no-one. If I can be confident of the existe
only of my own mental states, then I am reduced to believing that my mind constit
the whole world. This, at the very least, makes it difficult to see how I can justify a
in the existence of you, or your mind, or the natural world, or discourse about th
world. I am left in absurd isolation, without a world of any kind to investigat
discuss. No-one seems to wish to occupy this ridiculous philosophical position, but
escaping from it, constructivists tend either to re-admit an independently exi
object world, or else pursue a kind of social solipsism, in which other minds, and s
constructions, are all that exist.
Thus von Glasersfeld, the defender of radical constructivism, takes the first of th
possible routes, arguing as follows:

The key idea that sets constructivism apart from other theories of cognition
was launched 60 years ago by Jean Piaget. It was the idea that what we call
knowledge does not and cannot have the purpose of producing representa-
tions of an independent reality, but instead has an adaptive function. (von
Glasersfeld, 1996, p. 3)

In adopting this Piagetian view of the function of knowledge, he seems to believe th

has provided himself with an alternative epistemology. But to provide an explanati
the function of knowledge is not to say what knowledge consists of, nor how it aris
very soon emerges that for von Glasersfeld, although knowledge results from our sen
world, and thus: 'is the result of our own perceptual activities and therefore specif
our ways of perceiving and conceiving' (1996, p. 4), it allows organisms to surv
'given the constraints of the world in which they happen to be living' (1996, p. 4).
this entails not only that there is a contingent real world, in which we are living, bu
that we somehow obtain feedback from that world. The 'fit' of adaptation is a fit
objectively existing environment. I think von Glasersfeld would object that this 'f
only to a subjective world of experience, not to an independent objective world, but
the reply is simply that death may well bring about its end, without bringing about
end of the world. Most species which have existed are extinct. Survival is an admir
objective criterion of successful adaptation. Thus perception, and concepts, are re-c
nected to the world, in spite of being human constructions. To put it another way
Glasersfeld holds that all knowledge is relative to our human conceptual viewp
(conceptual relativism) but allows that we can know a world, including its constrai
well enough to survive within it. But any reasonable empiricist, or positivist, can acc
this easily. It is to say only that our knowledge is fallible and derives from our hu
point of view. It still remains a testable view of something, namely an indepen
reality. To use Phillips' (1995) terminology, nature is still to a degree our instructo
although we are the creators of our (imperfect) knowledge. The world hits back, a
were, when we try to act upon it, and gives us feedback when we investigate it.
Ernest (1994) takes the alternative route at the conceptual relativist fork, and ar
that:

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28 Oxford Review of Education

Social constructivism regards individual subjects and the realm of the social as
indissolubly interconnected. Human subjects are formed through their inter-
actions with each other (as well as by their individual processes) ... Mind is
seen as part of a broader context, the 'social construction of meaning' ... The
humanly constructed reality is all the time being modified and interacting to
fit ontological reality, although it can never give a 'true picture' of it. (Ernest,
1994, p. 8)

This move is important in differentiating social constructivism from radical, individual-

istic, constructivism. We shall need to examine it again in connection with claim 4b,
below. For now, however, suffice it to say that by allowing an 'ontological reality'
Ernest also re-admits a real world from which we can obtain sufficiently accurate
feedback in order to survive and to improve the 'fit' of our knowledge. Fit involves one
thing fitting another, in this case knowledge fitting (or failing to fit) the actual
(ontologically existing) world. This is just as well, since the alternative would seem to
be a form of social solipsism (only minds exist). However, Ernest also has to account
for how this fit is obtained. The difficulty is that, for a completely relativistic epistemol-
ogy, which both von Glasersfeld and Ernest think they have achieved, it seems there can
be no objective assessment of fit whatever. A relativistic epistemology implies that our
knowledge is completely relative to our particular human conceptual framework and
hence that no particular framework has any priority or preference over any other, except
in social terms. Any conceivable framework, be it individual or cultural, would do as
well as any other. The only criteria of 'fit' become socially negotiated criteria, as we
construct our human meanings via conversations. But if these criteria are confined to
different social processes, of power and persuasion, then the fit achieved is limited to
various types of social compliance or consensus, rather than to features of the natural
world. The part played in this process by perception and experiment, or more generally
feedback from the non-social world, remains fuzzy.
It is as if we imagined human beings all locked into a hermetically sealed, dark room
(Plato's cave, without any way for light to enter?) in which they converse about what
the world outside might be like. Amongst its oddities, this image of life fails to explain
how the physical sounds or letters of language would be perceived by the socially
constructed individuals taking part in the conversation, unless, that is, we make the
common sense assumption that the social world is built out of natural, material
elements, in a natural physical world. But then we are dealing with the natural world
just as empiricists, such as John Locke, always thought we were. It appears that social
constructivists thus fail to account for the fact that a socially constructed reality
presupposes a reality independent of all social constructions, for there has to be
something for the social constructions to be constructed out of (Searle, 1995). Even
language, the material out of which most constructivists seem to want to build
knowledge, is a socially constructed system of representation which is itself built out of
brute physical sounds or visual marks, or similar alternatives.
When constructivists argue that we 'construct the world' or that the 'the world is a
product of minds' we need to resist the temptation to infer that our constructions need
only be products of the will, or that the world beyond and independent of mind, is
whatever we desire it to be. Indeed, much of our learning consists in coming to terms
with the constraints of our own physical and biological make-up as well as the physical
and biological constraints of the wider environment. To sum up, conceptual relativism
is a breakthrough; it allows us, for example, to realise that the same reality can be

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 Constructivism Examined 29

represented in many ways. But it need not force us into an implausible subjective or
relativistic epistemology. We need to accept that our knowledge is fallible, rather than
certain, but who these days denies this? We also need to maintain some form of
feedback from the non-human world, in order to avoid falling into an individual or
social form of solipsism (and, incidentally, in order to survive).

(4a) All Knowledge is Idiosyncratic and Personal

(4b) All Knowledge is Socially Constructed

These two claims are best considered together because they appear to contradict one
another. 4a, the individualistic version, is important for teachers because it implies that
the same lesson, or 'experience' or activity may result in different learning by each
pupil. Unique subjective meanings are derived by each learner from ostensibly the same
teaching, or the same text. Social constructivists, on the other hand, generally following
Vygotsky, insist on the sociocultural nature of learning. Individual knowing subjects are
themselves considered to be constructed out of social interaction and social discourse
and the individual is thus him- or herself, a social product. Since all meanings are
social, and since Wittgenstein has plausibly argued that the notion of a private language
is basically incoherent, it is thought to follow that all teaching and learning is a matter
of sharing and negotiating socially constituted knowledge. This, too, has important
implications for teachers, since the 'shared construction of knowledge' becomes the
central image of teaching. Each of these positions tends towards an implausible extreme
which can be discerned more easily by keeping both of them in view together.
4a tends towards solipsism once again, for by insisting on the subjectivity of the
individual learner's experiences, it tends towards a denial of the possibility of sharing
and communicating knowledge between people. It is only one step beyond this to the
assertion that personal subjective experience is all the experience, and hence all the
world, that there is. If it is admitted that knowledge can in fact be communicated, and
shared, and compared, and evaluated, then the distinctive point about this claim (4a)
largely disappears and we are back with common sense. If it is not admitted, then
amongst other things we are left wondering what there is for teachers to do. The most
that 4a offers, as an insight into learning, is that each individual learner has a distinctive
point of view, based on existing knowledge and values, which the teacher ignores at her
peril.
The insistence of 4b on the intrinsically social nature of all knowledge, and hence all
learning, also tends towards an implausible extreme, in this case the idea that social
factors, or influences, alone determine all learning and all conscious thought. This
would deny the individual any role or influence whatever in learning. But since
memories are crucial to learning, and memories, not to mention perceptual systems, are
packaged in individual biological brains, this seems to go too far. Psychology may often
have over-estimated the power of individualistic explanations, but even those who
follow Marx in arguing that man's consciousness is a product of the social world would
generally admit that individuals, such as Marx, have often had a crucial role to play in
changing peoples' beliefs, in changing knowledge and hence in changing cultures.
Science may be a social tradition, largely based on social institutions, but this doesn't
mean that individual scientists have never made discoveries, or changed the path of
scientific knowledge through their individual efforts.
Another variant of this extreme socialisation theory is to argue that all knowledge is

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30 Oxford Review of Education

based on language and on linguistic representations, or perhaps on semiotic systems

more generally. Human minds are said to be 'shaped' by language, although it is not
clear why this one form of experience is held to exclude others (viz perceptual
experience, practical trial and error and non-verbal emotion). If held literally, this view
denies any knowledge to infants in their pre-linguistic phase (all of Piaget's sensori-
motor intelligence) and tends to imply that animals cannot know anything. It also
ignores all the implicit knowledge we have of the world which we have never put into
words. To focus on teaching as the shared construction of knowledge also risks ignoring
the extent to which learning depends on independent practice and problem-solving. It
tends to highlight learning as conceptualisation and to ignore learning as the formation,
or revision, of skills. But as well as sharing knowledge, we have to make knowledge our
own. Outside of these implausible extremes, claim 4b leaves us with the insight that
schooling, as a context for learning, is crucially dependent on linguistic representations
of knowledge.
It seems more reasonable altogether to bring 4a and 4b together and to argue (a) that
although individuals have their own personal history of learning, nevertheless they can
share in common knowledge, and (b) that although education is a social process,
powerfully influenced by cultural factors, nevertheless cultures are made up of sub-
cultures, even to the point of being composed of sub-cultures of one. Cultures and their
knowledge-base are constantly in a process of change and the knowledge stored by
individuals is not a rigid copy of some socially constructed template. In learning a
culture, each child changes that culture. To see more clearly why 4a and 4b have
developed their distinctive, if flawed, views of learning, it is helpful to bring out their
different underlying conceptions of what knowledge is. On the one hand (4a) knowl-
edge may be seen as 'essentially' defined in terms of the subjective mental states of each
knower. On the other hand (4b) knowledge may be defined in terms of the publicly
communicated and constructed bodies of knowledge that make up academic disciplines,
data-bases, books, theories, works of art and other cultural products (Popper, 1979).
Popper distinguished these two senses as subjective and objective conceptions of
knowledge. Only by denying that social groups are formed of individual minds, or by
denying that individual minds can communicate, are these two senses rendered incom-
patible. The individual and the social are mutually constructed and co-existing levels of
analysis and indeed of life. In passing, it is worth remembering that even behaviourism
recognised that individuals have unique histories of learning, whilst traditional empiri-
cist social psychologists have always studied social influences on learning. Construc-
tivism is not offering a new vision in either of these respects.

(5) Learning is Essentially a Process of Making Sense

This, although it has a seductive ring to it, is once again ultimately misleading. Making
sense (or making meaning) is a notion which has its home in the area of language, and
in activities such as reading, or more generally perceiving patterns. As we puzzle over
a text, or perhaps an image or a set of numerical symbols, we make sense as we
assimilate the new experience to our existing knowledge. Here, constructivism empha-
sises the aspect of learning which is about understanding and, in doing so, takes us
beyond any naive conception of learning as rote learning or as an unproblematic
'drinking in' of new information. Since Psychology, particularly in its view of intelli-
gence, tended for a long period largely to ignore the structure of the learner's knowl-
edge, this was certainly a great step forward in developing a more realistic conception

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 Constructivism Examined 31

FIG. 1.

of human learning. But, if taken too literally or one-sidedly, it can suggest (a) th
understanding is all there is to learning, and (b) that motivation is not a problem for
teachers. In an extreme form it may also suggest that we are at the mercy of our existin
knowledge.
One of the most simple and powerful ways to grasp the message of constructivism
to contemplate one of the many visual illusions or ambiguous images studied in t
psychology of visual perception. An example is provided in Fig. 1. In Kanizsa's design,
we 'see' (or construct) a series of white star points which are 'not there'. The effect is
a powerful one, in that our visual system delivers to us not only the white star shape bu
even a sense of contours, or edges of white against the white background and of
brighter white (star) figure against a dimmer white background. This is impressi
evidence of the way in which we 'construct' our view of the world, using store
knowledge, but we should also bear in mind: (i) that virtually all humans report seein
this phenomenon (contra claim 4a), (ii) that our visual system delivers this visua
experience up to us without any conscious effort, or deliberation on our part (contra
claim 1) and (iii) that we are also capable of examining the image and of noticing that
the enhanced brightness and the contours are in a sense illusory and can be resist
(contra extreme forms of claim 5). (These are features which are general to such
examples taken from perceptual research.) Thus, as well as being impressive examples
of the 'constructed' nature of our perceptions, such figures can also be read as example
of the objectivity of human perception, of its deep innate roots and of the way in whi
we can, up to a point, resist various features of our own initial view. But, on the oth
hand, we cannot make anything of such figures. If someone claimed to see here a set
nested circles, or a giraffe, we would think they had somehow got it wrong.
Returning to the classroom, it is surely important for teachers to realise how learner
are always trying to make sense of lessons in terms of what they already know. If th
context is too removed from their horizon of expectations, they may well abandon t
search for meaning, feeling either bored or confused, or both (Smith, 1975). But the
'making sense' aspect of learning, important though it is, needs to be placed alongside
two other aspects, which might be called 'making learning easy' and 'making learning
satisfying'. Learning, in its deliberate forms, is a struggle to get beyond existin
knowledge but, although we clearly rely on existing knowledge in this process, the r
of prior knowledge cannot itself explain the paradox of how we transcend it. Anothe
important part of learning is made up of practising (or tuning, or polishing,

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32 Oxford Review of Education

rehearsing) our use of concepts, skills and strategies and thus making performance easy.
Practice is vital in two ways: firstly because it is the chief way in which we eliminate
errors from habitual routines and secondly because it somehow (once more because of
evolved instinctive processes) allows us to transfer our limited powers of conscious
attention away from routine competences. Thus the practicing musician does not
exactly repeat each scale or musical piece, but strives to change the performance, at
each trial, so as to make it more fluent, error-free and easy to accomplish. Indeed, to
the extent that a trial is an exact repetition of a previous trial, nothing has been learnt.
The point of practice, in this sense, is to eliminate errors.
But beyond this, as we repeat and hone our skilled and habitual routines, either
deliberately, as in the example of the practising musician, or unconsciously, as we
automate everyday skills such as dressing, washing, eating and driving, we gradually
transfer their control to non-conscious brain processes. 'Consciousness', as William
James observed, 'goes away from where it is not needed'. This automation of skills and
habits is extremely important in virtually every area of learning because it allows us to
use our very limited span of conscious, purposeful thought, for strategically higher
levels of planning, execution and evaluation. Only if we have the elementary facts, or
skills, 'at our finger-tips' can we solve our problems strategically, with reference to
higher level, longer-term values, purposes or hypotheses. A mathematician who always
had to re-calculate simple number bonds, a chemist who always had to look up the
elementary properties of acids, an historian who never remembered any facts would
always be trapped in low-level aspects of their problems. To some extent, getting
deeper into any subject depends on developing a rich data-base of relevant information,
on knowing one's way around a topic, of having ready knowledge and skill available
when it is required. Only by making the early stages easy can we spend cognitive
resources on the new and the difficult. To memorise without understanding is indeed
mostly pointless and to realise this is to move beyond the naive. It is a move constantly
re-iterated by constructivists, and one that all teachers and learners need to make. But
to understand without ever remembering is also equally useless, for it condemns us to
repeat each episode of learning over and over again, ad infinitum.
Turning to the matter of making learning satisfying, constructivists often seem to
imply that since making sense is a natural cognitive state of affairs, for children as for
adults, pupils will naturally try to make sense of the school curriculum. The problem
of attitude, of motivating the learner to become deeply engaged in relevant activities, is
thus either magically dissolved or else tacked on to the constructivist view as a further
claim. In Smith's work, the problem is dissolved, as when he writes:
Learning is not difficult. It does not even require deliberate motivation. Most
of the time we learn without knowing that we are learning. (Smith, 1992, p.
38)

But this account fails to distinguish the 'easy' episodic, perceptual and incidental
learning, which is indeed largely an unconscious by-product of experience, from the
more 'difficult' deliberate learning of concepts, skills or strategies, which requires a
conscious effort of attention and a striving to make sense of new ideas or procedures.
This is the problematic type of learning which we routinely demand of pupils in
schools. In Fosnot's introduction, this aspect of learning gives rise to a further claim:
Challenging, open-ended investigations in realistic, meaningful contexts need
to be offered, thus allowing learners to explore and generate many possibili-
ties, both affirming and contradictory. (Fosnot, 1996, p. 29)

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 Constructivism Examined 33

Putting this into general terms, we get the further claim:

(6) Effective Learning Requires Meaningful, Open-ended, Challenging Problems for th

Learner to Solve

One may well agree with this as a general prescription for the curriculum, though
noting that some rather less challenging kinds of instruction and practice may also be
helpful, but it is difficult to see why it should follow from any of the earlier claims of
constructivism, any more than from any other view of learning. It recognises, as Smith
does not, that motivating learners to engage with the topic requires more than simply
facing them with new learning to do. It accepts, implicitly, that our existing model of
the world includes powerful values and dispositions, which set up expectations about
which experiences we are likely to find interesting or satisfying. This gives rise to one
of the most difficult and persistent problems for teachers, namely that of devising
lessons and activities which succeed in persuading pupils to try, whole-heartedly, to
learn something which is not, immediately, or obviously, interesting to them. But this
does not follow from the claims that learning is constructive, or relative to our
conceptual schemes, or subjective, or socially mediated. Perhaps it is thought to follow
from the claimed insight that learning is 'active', but, if so, we need to remember that
this notion of 'activity' has to include such things as reading a book, or listening to an
interesting talk, both of which can prove extremely satisfying. Nor are all 'active' lessons
(viz investigating how many different ways we can make the number 6, or which
substances dissolve in water) necessarily interesting to all learners. In other words, the
generally progressive tone of such supposed implications of constructivism has to be
justified by reference to additional premises, or arguments, about what pupils find
interesting or engaging; 'activity' alone will not suffice.

CONCLUSION

Constructivist accounts are often 'hopeful' in that they seem to pr

teachers, are prepared to recognise our pupils' natural learning capa
the ways in which knowledge is mediated via representations, and o
which past knowledge affects present learning, then classroom lear
problem, for teacher or taught. A further over-simplified claim
individual differences in learning come down to the consequenc
history of learning; no upsetting differences in innate ability o
confronted. Constructivism seems to offer learning without tears.
here, it seems to me, to brush all manner of obvious problems and
side. But if this is indeed so, disillusionment awaits the unwary con
The greatest insight of constructivism is perhaps the realisation of t
by a learner's existing knowledge and values to what is learned next,
and inhibiting it (e.g. Claxton, 1990). But this is a neutral insight, i
both possibilities and problems. Learners do need to interact, t
solve problems and to make sense of new ideas; but they also often
see why they should make the effort, fail to pay attention, miscon
forget what they learned ten minutes ago and fail to apply fra
effectively to new contexts. They can be helped by the expertise of
need instruction, demonstration and practice, as well as challen

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34 Oxford Review of Education

investigations, to make progress. In all this constructivism moves us beyond naivete,

but perhaps not very far.

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Correspondence: Richard Fox, School of Education, University of Exeter, Heavitree

Road, Exeter EX1 2LU, UK.

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