Students' perceptions of constructivist learning in a community college American History II survey course

Community College Review, Fall, 2001 by Joanne Maypole, Timothy Gray Davies

In constructivist teaching all learning is filtered through the learner's lens of reality. This qualitative study explored community college students' perceptions of constructivism applied in an American History II survey course. Participants were students enrolled in said course at a Colorado community college. The data for analysis came from student interviews. Students described experiences consistent with a constructivist classroom: they thought more critically and independently; they developed cognitively and affectively; and they enjoyed the learning process. One implication of this study was that applied constructivism may result in a more holistic approach to teaching and learning.

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Constructivist theorists believe students improve their critical thinking and problem solving skills when they construct new knowledge based upon background experiences and multiple resources. Students construct knowledge as individuals or as part of a social unit, but knowledge is not a separate entity unto itself, and knowledge cannot be independent of the knower. The philosophical, psychological, and epistemological underpinnings of constructivist learning theories are disparate, but the common thread throughout constructivism is learner-centered teaching. Students think critically when they combine background knowledge, independent research, and classroom presentations to build on their existing schema, thus expanding their foundations of knowledge. Constructivist theory lends itself well to classroom application; however, there are questions about transforming learning theory into practice.

There is abundant literature on constructivist learning theories, but according to Richardson (1997) it is contradictory and not prescriptive. The literature suggests that the process of transforming constructivist theories into practical classroom application is tenuous at best. Comments such as these in the literature convinced the authors that an attempt should be made to apply the constructivist elements to a community college American History II survey course, which one of the authors would teach during a fall semester. It was felt that the diversity of age, ethnicity, and nationality among this community college's students afforded the class many opportunities to learn valuable lessons from their peers and to share multiple perspectives.

Constructivist Learning Theories Defined

There are two main theories in applying constructivism to the community college classroom. The theories differ in focus of attention and in the role of formal academic knowledge in learning (Richardson, 1997). Regarding focus of attention, there are two models most commonly associated with psychologists Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. The Piagetian model focuses on the individual and his or her construction of meaning, which is called cognitive constructivism. Vygotsky's model focuses on language and social interactions and is called situated social constructivism. Constructivists do not agree on whether individuals construct ideas independently (Piaget) or if social interaction (Vygotsky) is needed to facilitate that process (Fosnot, 1996; Steffe & Gale, 1995). It may be a moot point. "We cannot understand an individual's cognitive structure without observing it interacting in a context, within a culture. But neither can we understand a culture as an isolated entity affecting the structure since all knowledge within the culture is only, to use Cobb's (1992) terminology "taken as shared" (Fosnot, 1996, p. 24). Although Piaget is known for his emphasis on individual cognitive development, he also believed language and social interactions were important to intellectual development. He wrote, "There is no longer any need to choose between the primacy of the social or that of the intellect; the collective intellect is the social equilibrium resulting from the interplay of the operations that enter into all cooperation" (Piaget, 1970, p. 114). Both social interaction and individual construction of knowledge are important aspects of cognitive development.

   Society doesn't think; only individuals think. Thus the relation between
   individual and society, like the relation between organism and environment,
   is a dialectical one. It is not only that society is the environment of the
   individuals and therefore perturbs and is perturbed by the individual ...
   only an individual can think, but only a society can have class structure.
   At the same time what makes the relation between society and the individual
   dialectical is that individuals acquire from the society produced by them
   individual properties that they did not possess in isolation. It is not
   just that wholes are more than the sum of their parts; it is that parts
   become qualitatively new by being part of the whole. (Lewontin, Rose, &
   Kamin, 1984, p. 287)

John Dewey (1916) believed constructivism was better accomplished through social interactions. He said, "When words do not enter as factors into a shared situation, whether overtly or imaginatively, they operate as pure physical stimuli, not as having meaning or intellectual value" (p. 16). Vygotsky (1978) stated that within social interactions, cultural meanings are shared and internalized. "Increased learning will occur if the specialist uses a learner-centered approach, where facilitators utilize the learner's experiences and knowledge in the learning process where they develop methods in which students interact with and reflect on the subject matter" (Beaudin, 1995, p. 3). A comparison between Piaget and Vygotsky reveals that there were differences, but also similarities in their beliefs. "Both are clearly constructivists: They both see knowledge as self-regulated construction. Both see social interactions as having an important role, if for different reasons. In many ways their work converges" (Wadsworth, 1996, p. 12).