Although constructivism has many meanings and connotations in educational literature, I will examine this concept specifically from the perspective of my academic training (as a Developmental Psychologist) in this article. In addition to my academic background, I have reached a broader understanding of constructivism from my own teaching. Consequently, some of what I write represents extensions of various theories based upon my own teaching experiences, rather than these theories in a pure form.

For this article, I will work with a simplified definition of constructivism: i.e. that learning occurs most effectively when the individual actively processes the information in a way that is meaningful to him/her, and not simply and passively incorporates information unchanged from its original form. Next, I will briefly outline two major developmental theories associated with constructivism, highlighting aspects most relevant to university education.

The first theory that I will discuss is Piaget’s. Constructivism is central to Piagetian theory, in which the child acts like a little scientist—actively exploring the world, collecting data, testing hypotheses and generating principles (albeit imperfect or incorrect ones earlier in development). The major point here is the active exploring of the environment and the generation of individually-derived ways to make meaning of these observations. The individual then uses these schemas to incorporate more information; and when observations are significantly inconsonant with existing views, the schemas are modified accordingly.

It is also useful to highlight Piaget’s final stage of cognitive development, formal operational thought, as it is most applicable to a university setting. Two central aspects of this stage are: (a) abstract thought able to simultaneously evaluate alternative hypotheses, and (b) lack of egocentrism. Abstract thought refers to the fact that the individual can now think “what if” and draw logical conclusions without any actual experimentation or manipulation of objects. This development leads to more formal and logical thinking about principles and processes to predict and explain phenomenon. The ability to think “what if” requires a lack of egocentrism, the ability to think and evaluate multiple perspectives oftentimes beyond one’s own previously held view. Piaget’s model is useful for a university setting, with the emphasis on scientific and logical thought. While the focus for Piaget is the individual actively interacting with the physical world, the next theory adds social and interpersonal aspects to constructivism.

Socio-cultural theorists link their ideas back to the seminal work of Lev Vygotsky. Although work on the socio-cultural aspects of cognitive development really represents a larger framework more than a unified theory, some essential aspects of this perspective contrast sharply with traditional cognitive theories: traditional theories often focus on the individual, while socio-culturalists focus on the ongoing, culturally-mediated social interactions in which the individual is embedded.

This essential contrast has two important ramifications. First, the socio-cultural view highlights the importance of social processes on cognitive activity. Specifically, this perspective is interested in the bi-directional interactions between novices and experts, particularly the guidance by an expert sensitive to feedback given by the novice about the appropriate level and pace of learning. This perspective greatly differs from traditional unidirectional lecturing, where social processes are almost nil and the expert solely determines the pace and level with relatively little attention to feedback from students.

Second, by embedding the individual within socio-cultural activities, it is vital that the assessment of cognition be done in a contextualised manner. In fact, several socio-culturalists insist that cognitive abilities are only manifested in such socio-cultural activities and that believing that cognitive abilities are isolated pieces residing in one’s physical brain is not useful for psychologists and educators who should focus on direct manifestations rather than indirect inferences and piecemeal measurements. Therefore, in summary, the socio-cultural perspective emphasises the rooted nature of cognitive activity within a cultural and interpersonal setting.

In my opinion, as a Developmental Psychologist and an educator, both Piagetian and socio-cultural theories have something to offer and are not mutually exclusive. Collectively, they highlight several things that university educators should consider.

1. Students learn best when actively making meaning of the material

   Therefore, it is important to avoid teaching methods where we expect students to merely know what we tell them and what they read. Instead, we should seek to promote deeper thinking by having students manipulate the material in their minds, by addressing such questions as “how does this happen,” “why does this occur,” “in what circumstances does this hold,” and “are there other explanations—which explanation is better and why”.

   As the socio-cultural perspective holds, the professor—as the expert—needs to guide such inquiry. One fruitful approach would be to: (a) assess what students know, (b) build upon those schemas by asking the above questions of the students (rather than giving the answers ourselves), and/or (c) challenge inaccurate naive conceptions about the world and ask students to generate and then evaluate a range of other explanations.

   Constructivism does not imply hands-off teaching. On the contrary, the professor needs to be especially active in promoting these deep thinking processes in the students. As the expert, the professor can also add depth and breadth to the inquiry’s content, and provide some answers concerning whether the students’ speculations have been proved through empirical research (my experience is that students often derive explanations that are consonant with research findings).

   Two additional points should be highlighted here:

   • Students do in fact learn content with this approach. A constructivist approach, I feel, does not mean leaving students floating without answers, only promoting questioning. Instead, this approach promotes students’ questioning, down a path of logical inquiry, which then derives various explanations that are rigorously evaluated. (However, like scientists, the students realise that after this process, there are many more questions to answer and investigate.) In my experience, students going through this experience not only are exposed to the same content as if I lectured the material, but also get a value-added experience, i.e. the learning is deeper and students often bring up interesting and relevant issues that I had not considered.
   • Students do not need to be “experts” to engage in deep discussions. Oftentimes I hear the belief that students need to learn a bunch of content before one can have a discussion. According to constructivism and my own teaching experience, this is definitely wrong. Students do not come into our classes as blank slates, but rather they possess various observations and beliefs about the world that we can build upon (or challenge). These pre-existing schemas are prime material for starting discussion and inquiry. It would be hard to think of any subject that we teach at NUS about which students do not have some form of ideas or opinions. When we treat our students as if they do not know anything about our subject, we rob them of the opportunities of deep learning through active inquiry.

2. Assessment should be contextualised

   Of course, continuous assessments provide many opportunities for contextualisation. For example, papers, projects and experiments rooted in experiences in and observations of the world are especially useful assessments. However in NUS, even the most heavily weighted continuous assessments counts for a minority of overall marks in a course. This fact demands that we critically scrutinise our exams. Unfortunately, any casual observation of NUS students during final exam time suggests very de-contextualised assessment—when the prime mode of learning appears to be individual students staring at printouts of lecture notes given to them, seemingly in an effort to memorise all the words on the pages. I am not challenging the wisdom of giving students lecture notes (in fact, this is something that I do). My real concern is that this memorisation of lecture notes strongly suggests de-contextualised assessment. Although space limits prevents deeper exploration of this issue, open-book exams that demand such deeper learning outcomes as applying principles and processes to novel situations would help counteract mere memorisation, contextualise assessment and promote higher-order learning outcomes valued by NUS.

3. Finer attention should be paid to social processes in the classroom

   Elicitation of multiple perspectives from students becomes primary. Discussions of these meanings and their subsequent evaluation and integration are essentially social processes and thrive with thoughtful facilitation by the professor. Even in a large class where all students cannot have an opportunity to speak, everyone benefits from these multiple meanings. This is because such discussions help build upon or modify one’s existing schema, provide other alternatives that require thoughtful consideration, and push for integration among various perspectives—evolving more complex schema than previously held and forcing the individual student to derive criteria to evaluate the validity of each argument (since all arguments are not equally convincing).

In conclusion, constructivism demonstrates that learning is most effective when learners actively make meaning of the material, in ways that build upon, challenge, and extend their schemas about the world. These processes can be promoted via social interactions involving such activities as being exposed to and then evaluating a variety of explanations generated by peers and being guided by an expert into deeper and more integrated modes of inquiry. As university educators, it is important that we structure our classroom activities and critically examine our assessment methods in order to promote such processes.