Page 1
Adapted with permission from E. Mirochnik and D. C. Sherman. (2002). Passion
and Pedagogy: Relation, Creation, and Transformation in Teaching. New
York: Peter Lang, pp. 197-214.
The Challenge of Constructivist Teaching
George E. Hein
INTRODUCTION
Constructivism, the current name for an old idea that human beings construct knowledge
(Hawkins, 1994), is an appealing theory when used to describe how people learn, how they make
meaning of the world. It is significantly more challenging when viewed from the perspective of the
teacher. Constructivist learning may be little more than a tautology, but constructivist teaching
involves serious questions about pedagogy. If meaning-making is personal and idiosyncratic,
what is the role of the teacher? What strategies are appropriate for teaching in a constructivist
world?
At one level, constructivism challenges a teacher’s authority and place in the classroom. Many
writers have addressed this political issue. (see Apple, 1979). If the intention of education is for
students to construct their own meanings, then the traditional role of the instructor as sole
dispenser of knowledge is necessarily diminished. As a result, a more democratic educational
experience can be forged for students. But this question of power relationships in education
represents only one aspect of the challenges faced by the constructivist instructor, for, if
meaning-making is personal, what is the pedagogic role for the teacher? It is one thing to give up
power, it is another, and, I believe, more difficult task to develop a defensible pedagogic strategy
that allows a crucial role for the teacher and still provides room to accept and even encourage
personal meaning-making (see Fasnot, 1996.)
The next section provides a brief overview of the essential components of any constructivist
educational theory to illustrate the nature of this challenge.
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Figure 1
Knowledge exists
outside the learner.
Knowledge
Didactic,
Expository Discovery
leading to restructuring.
added bit by bit.
Incremental,
Th eorie s o f L e a r ni ng
Active,
Theories of
Stimulus – Constructivism
Response
Knowledge is constructed by the learner
personally or socially.
from George E. Hein, “The Challenge of Constructivist Teaching”
Adapted with permission from E. Mirochnik and D. C. Sherman (2002).
Passion and Pedagogy: Relation, Creation, and Transformation in Teaching.
New York: Peter Lang, pp. 197-214.
Hein: ms. for Passion & Pedagogy page 2
The central premise of constructivism is that human beings create the world they know and
understand from the interaction of the sensations that impinge on them and their responsive acts
of cognition. The world of meaning is not revealed through the senses and reason, but generated
by us. Essential to constructivist theories is both a particular view of learning theory and one of
epistemology. It addresses both how people learn, and what they learn. If we consider possible
theories about learning and theories of knowledge (epistemologies) and view each as falling
somewhere on separate, orthogonal continua, then constructivist educational theories fall into
one quadrant of the possible combinations of these two domains. This model is illustrated in
Figure 1 (Hein, 1994, 1998).
The constructivist view can be contrasted with its diagonal opposite quadrant, the most traditional
view of education, which I have labeled “Didactic, Expository” education. Didactic, Expository
education is based on the theories that argue both that people learn passively (that learning
consists of the incremental accumulation of knowledge) and that this knowledge reflects the
actual state of the world outside our minds (a “realist” epistemology).
ACTIVE LEARNING
An increasing body of evidence, most of it accumulated in the 20 century, supports the view that
human beings construct knowledge, that their minds are actively engaged in any learning activity.
It is worthwhile reviewing some of the evidence that supports the notion of mind actively engaged
in constructing knowledge. The evidence comes from three different domains. First,
th
developmental psychology, one of the triumphs of 20 century social science, has convincingly
demonstrated that children are not born with the ability to interpret the world as their elders do.
They have to learn the meaning of things and they do so gradually, as they gain experience.
Piaget’s clinical interviews of young children (Piaget, 1929) are full of these incomplete
interpretations of nature or language, based on children’s meaning making. Teachers of young
children constantly report their students’ idiosyncratic interpretations of the world, based on their
(limited) knowledge and experience. Careful descriptions of classroom practice abound with
students' delightful conclusions, based on the evidence available to them, that differ from
canonical views (for example, see Rosebery & Warren, 1998). Most ”cute” stories about our
children’s and grandchildren’s intellectual development stem from their efforts to make sense of
the world based on their personal experience.
Further evidence for the universality of meaning-making comes from the experience of those
deprived of the full range of sensory connections with the world. Oliver Sacks has written about
people with various neurological or sensory deficiencies. One striking group whose experiences
Hein: ms. for Passion & Pedagogy page 3
he describes are the few individuals who, blind all or almost all of their lives, suddenly regain
sight. These patients face profound, long-lasting sensory, intellectual, and emotional challenges
in their attempts to make meaning of the overwhelming visual world they encounter. Sacks says,
The rest of us, born sighted, can scarcely imagine such confusion. For we, born with a full
complement of senses, and correlating these, one with the other, create a sight world from
the start, a world of visual objects and concepts and meanings. When we open our eyes
each morning, it is upon a world we have spent a lifetime learning to see. We are not
given this world: we make our world through incessant experience, categorization,
memory, reconnection. (Sacks, 1995, 114)
Finally, significant research by cognitive psychologists during the past few decades on how
people learn, how they come to understand their jobs or professional work, how they learn to play
chess or pursue other hobbies, and, in general, how the mind functions, informs us that all
humans construct knowledge. Summarizing this work in a recent National Research Council
publication, the authors state,
Humans are viewed as goal-directed agents who actively seek information. They come to
formal education with a range of prior knowledge, skills, beliefs, and concepts that
significantly influence what they notice about the environment and how they organize and
interpret it. This, in turn, affects their abilities to remember, reason, solve problems, and
acquire new knowledge. . . .In the most general sense, the contemporary view of learning
is that people construct new knowledge and understandings based on what they already
know and believe.
(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, p. 10)
The arguments above lead to immense controversy in education. Fierce battles has raged
throughout this century between progressive educators and conservatives, between those who
argue for the importance of experience and activity and those who focus education on drill and
practice, on “back to basics” where subjects are learned in a specific order with an emphasis on
systematic development of skills and memorization of facts.
Regardless of the outcome of this political dispute, the pedagogic consequences of the “active
mind” approach to education are clear: in order to learn, learners must be given the opportunity to
engage with material, to have experiences, to manipulate both nature and ideas, to experiment,
argue, inquire, and see the results of their own activities. Progressive educators at every level
have generated curricula and classroom situations that allow these activities to take place.
Science courses include laboratory exercises and fieldwork, history students collect oral histories
from family members, social science students practice interviewing and observing, and arts
students draw, play, and perform.
CONSTRUCTED KNOWLEDGE
But constructivism, the lower right hand quadrant in Figure 1, includes an additional, crucial
concept. It differs not only from the traditional, didactic expository educational approach, but also
from another popular view of education, which I have labeled “discovery.” Discovery Education
Figure 2
Meaning-Making and Educational Theory
Status of Attitudes Towards Educational
Meaning-Making Meaning-Making Theory
Traditional,
Ignore or Suppress Content-Centered
Meaning making
is an inevitable Discovery,
consequence of Tolerate or Accept Active Learning,
human interaction Learner-Centered
with nature
and culture.
Encourage or Embrace Constructivism
from George E. Hein, “The Challenge of Constructivist Teaching”
Adapted with permission from E. Mirochnik and D. C. Sherman (2002).
Passion and Pedagogy: Relation, Creation, and Transformation in Teaching.
New York: Peter Lang, pp. 197-214.
Hein: ms. for Passion & Pedagogy page 4
accepts that people learn actively, but posits that the knowledge thus constructed can still be
“right” or “wrong;” that it more or less reflects the way the world actually is and that, through
actively seeking knowledge, we discover it.
Supporters of constructivism argue not only that personal meaning-making is inevitable, but also
that it is the goal of education and therefore needs to be encouraged and accepted. They suggest
that understanding comes from the active creation (construction) by the learner of the knowledge
itself (von Glasersfeld, 1990). Not only do students have to be given the opportunity to
experience: to measure, observe, interview, draw and perform. their products also need to be
honored and validated on criteria other than their fidelity to an accepted canon. (For implications
of these differing criteria for teaching science, see Duckworth et al., 1990).
The difference in the way these theories view personal meaning-making is illustrated in Figure 2.
A PERSONAL JOURNEY
My own professional education was primarily within the traditional domain of didactic, expository
teaching. I studied chemistry and the model of our education (although there were striking
exceptions in practice, as I realized much later) was the professor who could give a lecture where
all the material was neatly laid out on the blackboard in a logical progression. When I arrived in
Boston in the early 1960’s, one of the rituals of the organic chemistry community was to attend
the public lectures by Nobel Prize-winning synthetic chemist, R. B. Woodward. About once a
year, he would entertain and enlighten colleagues and students by presenting a dazzling lecture,
illustrating his latest achievement (supported by dozens of graduate students and postdoctoral
fellows) in the synthesis of one more biologically important compound. The lectures always
followed this neat, logical pattern, demonstrating his skill and knowledge. After the lecture, some
of his doctoral and postdoctoral students might suggest to us that the actual practice in the
laboratory wasn’t so neat; there had been other pathways that failed, and some serendipitous
moments captured and exploited. Although we all knew about the realities of laboratory work and
the tortuous effort involved in synthetic chemistry, we nevertheless accepted Woodward's
“stories” as the model of how to unlock nature’s secrets.
Besides the hints from the real world of research, experiences from my own teaching also
contradicted the idealized, logical picture of education. First as a graduate teaching fellow and
then later, especially as a teacher of a basic chemistry course for non-majors (a course decreed
to be inadequate preparation for any future courses in the department), I became aware of the
apparently “stupid” things my bright students tended to do. I also noted that well-meaning,
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dedicated students frequently didn’t understand what I taught, no matter how detailed, sensible,
and logical my expositions might have been. It was years before I came to understand that when
I asked them questions or probed their knowledge they simply had different models in their heads
from whatever it was that I expected them to know.
Subsequent experiences as a member of a curriculum development group heavily influenced by
Piaget and the British Integrated Day approach (Plowden, 1967; Weber, 1971), and work with
adult students returning for advanced degrees, as well as considerable reading, gave me some
appreciation of both the power and the value of personal meaning making in education.
My vague ideas about self-directed learning were confirmed when I came to Lesley College
(which recently became Lesley University) and had the opportunity to work as a faculty member
and later as director of the Masters’ Degree Independent Study Program. This brilliant program,
conceived by the first Dean of the Graduate School, William Perry, and developed by its first
director, Cynthia Cole, was based on a deceptively simple model: students were only required 1)
to describe what they wanted to learn, 2) devise a learning plan—how they would go about this
through courses, apprenticeships, reflection, and papers, 3) to produce a final major project or
thesis, and carry all this out with (infrequent) guidance of a small faculty team. In its 25 years,
the program has remained essentially unchanged.
The opportunity to pursue their own interests, to have faculty take seriously their choice of topics,
and the requirement that they demonstrate their learning, whatever it might be, were sufficient for
students to produce amazingly professional work in a wide range of fields within the boundaries
of Lesley’s subject areas in the human service field. The successful careers of over 500 alumni
attest to the viability and appeal of this constructivist approach to pedagogy.
A more specific challenge came with development of a CAGS program in 1977 and, later, the Ph.
D. Program, which admitted its first class in 1987. Both programs required that all students take
some courses together, regardless of their personal interests. As cross-college programs, these
seminars enrolled a range of students committed to developing professional competence in
human service fields, especially education and some forms of therapy, specifically, counseling
psychology and the use of the arts in therapy (expressive therapies).
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INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINAR:
THE INTERFACE OF TEACHING AND THERAPY
Plans for advanced programs at Lesley College, both CAGS and Ph. D. included our intentions
to provide some common experience for students that would allow them both to develop
professional skills and form a community among each cohort. As director of the program, my
challenge was to develop a course that embodied the constructivist theory I had come to accept,
that would be interesting and provocative for all students, and that would challenge them and
provide them with skills and outcomes appropriate for their range of interests. The
interdisciplinary seminar descried below allowed me to accomplish these goals.
In developing the course, I tried to adhere to the following criteria, which I felt were necessary to
create a constructivist educational environment.
STRUCTURE
From our work in the Independent Study program, I had come to realize that a requirement for
any educational activity that provides opportunities for students to pursue their own interests is
intellectual flexibility be paired with clear, consistent, and strict administrative structure. The
cliché that progressive education failed because it did not impose “rules” on students may be
historically inaccurate in relation to the models proposed by Dewey and others, but it does reflect
a common confusion. Guidelines for pedagogy need to be considered separately from guidelines
for the administrative structure of education. Student autonomy and ability to pursue personal
interests in depth are facilitated, not hindered, within the confines of clear expectations.
Assignments, papers, and other responsibilities for the students need to be spelled out in detail
and reinforced. The challenge of finding your own subject matter and grappling with its
complexities is sufficiently difficult for all of us. Adding the burden of trying to figure out what is
required administratively in a course leads to chaos.
Thus, the interdisciplinary seminar has detailed expectations for students: a specified amount of
reading; a requirement that each student take responsibility for preparing a class session (and
supplying reading to the rest of the class in advance); required papers, including comparative
book reviews; and a final term-paper.
Hein: ms. for Passion & Pedagogy page 7
The detailed requirements were all administrative not substantive. Thus, students had to review
professional literature, but they determined what they read and wrote about; students had to
prepare a presentation, but the topic was their own professional work, as they chose to define it.
TOPIC
The next challenge was to find some unifying theme that would allow students to pursue their
own interest, but that would be relevant to all the class members. It occurred to me (in a classic
“Eureka!” moment, as I was shaving one morning) that all the students were engaged in some
form of either teaching or therapy (or both). Examining the interface between these two domains
would be relevant to all of them. No matter where on the spectrum of Lesley University human
service programs students were engaged—and some of the independent study students,
especially, were exploring at the fringes of what might be described as either education or
therapy—they were grappling with issues that covered these areas.
In truth, the “unifying theme” was devised to provide students with a point of reference within
which they could explore their own professional lives, not as an absolute requirement. On the
whole, students accepted my topic with good humor. But, all bent it to reflect their own interest,
while a few argued that this topic was not interesting or relevant for them. My usual counter was
to suggest that, at a minimum, they could address why the topic was not appropriate to their
profession. I remember one student who argued that her doctoral subject was museum
education, which had nothing to do with therapy and, besides, there was no literature on the
therapeutic value of museum education. It took her some weeks to discover, partly from other
class presentations and partly from library research, not only that such a literature existed, but
also that it had some meaning to her own ideas about the educational potential for museum visits.
SEEDING IDEAS
A final requirement for an effective class, in my view, is to “seed” the course with suggested
content. Allowing students to pursue their own interests is a powerful educational strategy, but all
of us need time and stimulation to connect our every day lives with an academic experience.
Students need guidance in getting started on constructing their own knowledge and they need to
be provided with sources, ideas, and models. The course provided three different kinds of input
to help them get started.
First, I gave the students an extensive reading list of material that, in my view, covered some
aspect of the teaching therapy interface. This list included:
1. Therapists’ literature relating therapy and education, including classical articles by Anna Freud,
Eckstein & Motto, Bruno Bettelheim etc.
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2. Educational literature discussing various aspects of the noncognitive components of education,
such as alternative schools like Summerhill (a school for troubled adolescents [Ginandes, 1973]
had once actually been housed in the same building that contained the Interdisciplinary Seminar
classroom in the early years of the Ph. D. Program),
3. Work by Maslow, Rogers and other humanistic psychologists who discussed its educational
significance.
4. Political issues associated with education and its social (and psychological) impact on a wide
range of children, as illustrated in writings by authors such as Delpit, Henderson, Native American
educators, and others.
5. Adult development and education, especially women’s development, as discussed by Belenky,
et al., Daloz, Gilligan, Miller, and others.
Since one course requirement was that students suggest additions to the list, the bibliography
grew over the years. Thus, therapeutic uses of theater, deaf education, and child development
(to name just three examples) were eventually represented on the list because students had
provided fascinating articles that illuminated the teaching/therapy interface in these fields.
Second, I gave an introductory lecture (in a traditional style) in which I outlined some of the
historical development of major ideas about both modern educational theory and therapy, with
constant references to the various readings on the list. The intention of the lecture was both to
make a connection with the theme and to introduce enough ideas from the various readings so
that students would be tempted to engage with something illustrated in the readings supplied. I
based it on an idea suggested to me decades ago; to search the index of any required book that
didn’t seem too appealing, since it was likely that at least one entry would tempt the reader.
Finally, at an early class, I modeled the presentations I wanted them to make by talking about my
own professional development and providing some of my own evolving history as an educator.
The readings for my presentations were papers I had written on educational topics. I stressed
that I considered myself far to one end of the teaching/therapy interface, engaging in teaching
and not in therapy, although I usually had to admit, in response to class discussion, that my own
style might still be “therapeutic.”
CLASS ORGANIZATION
The early sessions allowed the class to get started and for students to become acclimatized to
the freedom of choosing their own topic, as well as providing them with prompts and (I hoped)
tempting subject matter. By the fourth class, we would embark on the main content of the course,
the individual student presentations of their own professional work, buttressed by readings they
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assigned. These presentations and readings varied widely. Almost everyone took their own
presentation seriously and prepared at length. But not everyone was a gifted presenter, and,
therefore, classes varied.
INSTRUCTION AT THE TEACHING/THERAPY INTERFACE
It’s possible that other topics could have served the seminar as well, but the unifying theme also
allowed the topic to be reflected in the class dynamics. At times, and more some semesters than
others, the class itself served as a combined educational and therapeutic experience for all its
members, including the instructor. Powerful bonding occurred among class members, personal
experiences were shared, and students felt validated and revitalized. It was possible to use the
class dynamics as a subject for discussion of what constituted the boundary between the two
fields, and where they might overlap.
CONSEQUENCES OF CONSTRUCTIVIST TEACHING
THE INSTRUCTOR’S ROLE
The greatest challenge for me was to accept the consequences of turning the subject matter and
especially much of the responsibility for class presentations, over to the students. Each week, I
diligently read the material assigned by students and came prepared to help with the discussion,
but the presenter controlled the dynamic and atmosphere of the class to a large extent. I found
relinquishing control very difficult, especially when the class didn’t turn out to be great.
I worried about whether I could afford to continue in a relatively passive role (not a natural one for
me), as I also realized that I couldn’t have it both ways. If the students were to experience a
constructivist class, where their meanings were valued, they had to have the opportunity to take
charge, and, inevitably, the opportunity to do poorly. While most class sessions were stimulating
and rich, the few times that the class dragged were painful for me and made me question the
process I had instituted.
INSTRUCTOR’S KNOWLEDGE
Another concern for me was that, frequently, students discussed topics about which I had only
peripheral knowledge, if any at all. Fortunately, a life time of academic teaching does lead to
familiarity with a range of subjects, but a vague knowledge of, say, current controversies in
reading instruction hardly make an instructor qualified to lead a discussion generated by a
reading specialist’s description of the last 20 years of her professional responsibilities. Each
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week, I had to decide how much I needed to do additional background reading on the topic to be
discussed. Eventually, I learned that the amount I knew about a subject was less important than
my ability to distinguish between a well formulated presentation that made sense to me with my
general knowledge of the practice of education, and one which raised questions about its validity
in relation to what I already knew. There were times, especially if the presentation was by a
therapist, where I simply had to accept acknowledge my limited background. Admitting my own
ignorance in a field seemed to disturb the class much less than it bothered me.
STUDENT ANXIETY
Administrative clarity does not assuage student anxiety. Although (at least for me) student
responsibilities in the course were clear, every semester started off with anxious student
questions about what they were supposed to do. The first weeks were always full of anxiety,
presumably because there was no subject for students to learn. How would they know that they
had done what was expected if they couldn’t measure the amount of learning that had taken
place against the standard of the total subject to be covered? Although those were seldom the
words used, this seemed, to me, to be the central issue of their tense questions about
assignments, what readings would be satisfactory, and how their own presentations should be
structured. If I answered that they had wide latitude to do as they wished with the bounds of the
general assignment, that was seldom satisfactory to them. If I listened to their proposal about
what they intended to do (once they had gotten far enough to make a proposal to me) and said,
“Yes, that would be fine,” they were more likely to be satisfied. I’m not sure anyone ever realized
that,regardless of what he or she proposed, my answer was almost always affirmative.
POWERFUL STORIES
The structure allowed powerful personal stories to emerge. Students repeatedly revealed intense
personal histories that described their complex journeys to reach current professional standing.
Many reflected back on childhood events—the experience of caring for a disabled sibling, the
trauma of family tragedy, or having to confront discrimination—to emphasize how they were
currently integrating teaching and therapy in their work. Lesley University graduate students are
primarily adults with significant life experiences. The opportunity to describe how they viewed
themselves as professionals in this setting allowed them to reflect not only on their “official”
professional training and situation, but also to talk about how their whole lives had influenced their
current professional standing.
“COVERAGE”
A further consequence of the course was that over a period of time many of the major current
controversies in education surfaced in the class. Unfortunately, the number of students from
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therapy fields was relatively small, often only one or two of the ten to 20 students enrolled, so that
the professional concerns of this field were not well represented. But there were sufficient
education students so that topics prominent in the professional literature and the national press,
such as multicultural education, inclusion, conservative challenges, equity, testing and
assessment, and community control were discussed in class. I could not have chosen “topical
issues in education” more accurately than the way they naturally surfaced in the class.
Thus, one concern of many educators about “coverage” if students are allowed to follow their own
interests, turned out to be irrelevant. On reflection, this is not too surprising. The students, all
practicing professionals, live in the same world we do and they are affected by all the perplexing
issues and quandaries that give rise to debate and discussion in their fields. When asked to
comment about their work, these bring these topics to the table.
STUDENT WORK
Student work in the course was generally of high quality and certainly substantial. The amount of
reading required for the course was much more than I could ever have assigned on my own.
Although I cautioned them to keep these weekly readings brief, on average, they assigned hefty
background pieces, not infrequently two or three articles, when one was all that was asked for.
CONCLUSION
The constructivist instructor faces a complex challenge: how to organize a course so that
students are engaged and can progress in developing a deeper understanding of material, while
simultaneously keeping a course moving and defining a teaching role.
The energy generated by a room full of students free to pursue their own interests can be
magical. However, in the constructivist classroom the instructor has less control of the class
dynamic than he or she does in a more traditional one. Student discontent is simply more visible
(as is student enthusiasm) when the instructor does not provide the content of the course. So
classes varied from semester to semester, and the spectacular evenings of most years, were
offset by the few semesters when I found it painful to face another three hours that were sure to
include a wrangle about “requirements” or difficult exchanges between students.
What I do know is that it is possible to create effective constructivist environments, and that I
wouldn’t teach any other way.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank Elsa Bailey, Catherine Hughes, Joe Griffith and Emily Romney for their careful reading
and thoughtful comments on this manuscript.
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