Disclaimer: This is a machine generated PDF of selected content from our products.

This functionality is provided solely for your

convenience and is in no way intended to replace original scanned PDF. Neither Cengage Learning nor its licensors make any
representations or warranties with respect to the machine generated PDF. The PDF is automatically generated "AS IS" and "AS
AVAILABLE" and are not retained in our systems. CENGAGE LEARNING AND ITS LICENSORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY
AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES FOR AVAILABILITY,
ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, COMPLETENESS, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. Your use of the machine generated PDF is subject to all use restrictions contained in The Cengage Learning
Subscription and License Agreement and/or the Gale Academic OneFile Terms and Conditions and by using the machine
generated PDF functionality you agree to forgo any and all claims against Cengage Learning or its licensors for your use of the
machine generated PDF functionality and any output derived therefrom.

Constructivism as substitute for memorization in learning:

meaning is created by learner
Author: Asghar Iran-Nejad
Date: Fall 1995
From: Education(Vol. 116, Issue 1)
Publisher: Project Innovation Austin LLC
Document Type: Article
Length: 9,279 words

Abstract:
Educators have developed strategies to improve education based on constructivism. With a common emphasis on the improvement
of intellectual development, a variety of educational approaches are emerging from the genetic epistemology of Piaget.
Constructivism in education has become an appealing alternative to traditional educational practices, but its meanings as a cognitive
science and an educational movement do not coincide. This article addresses the issues that relate to the potential effectiveness of
constructivism as an educational movement by reemphasizing its original assumptions. The authors review the work of Piaget and
focus on the relationship of Piaget's constructivism and more recent developments in biofunctional cognition and how these aspects
may be relevant in the classroom.

Full Text:
Introduction

Reacting to a decade of criticism and topdown school reform efforts, educators have begun to develop their own tactics to improve
education based on the inherent content of schooling: authentic learning, critical thinking, knowledge creation and ownership by the
student, new roles for teachers, and the school as a caring community (Elmore, 1991a; Lipman, 1991; Murphy, 1991; Lieberman,
Darling-Hammond, & Zukerman, 1991; Baumann, 1991; Newmann, 1991: and Pechman 1992). These developments have diverse
origins, share a common emphasis on students' intellectual development, and tend to be considered under the increasingly popular
term constructivism. Constructivism is greatly influenced by Piagetian epistemology (Duckworth, 1987; Confrey, 1990; von Glaserfeld,
1984; Kamii, 1985). Duckworth (1987) defined constructivism succinctly: "Meaning is not given to us in our encounters, but it is given
by us, constructed by us, each in our own way, according to how our understanding is currently organized" (p. 112). Psychologist and
educators are embracing a new view of learning that rejects reductionist theories of the past. According to Resnick (1987b), "We are
in the midst of a major convergence of psychological theories ... today, cognitive scientists generally share the assumption that
knowledge is constructed by learners" (p. 19).

In education constructivism has become an appealing alternative to traditional process-product educational practices because it
seems to address the criticisms of current educational practices, and it promises to deliver higher levels of literacy, multiple forms of
literacy, self-reliance, cooperation, problem-solving skills, and satisfaction with school. Constructivism implies a new kind of pedagogy
where the emphasis will be more on what students do than what teachers do, and where there will be performance assessment of
student learning rather than standardized achievement testing (Elmore, 1991b; Resnick & Klopfer, 1989; Weinberg, 1989).

In cognitive theories constructivism has many forms. It is a specific theory of cognitive development (Piaget, 1970), an information
processing theory of knowledge (Neisser, 1967), a way of thinking about human cognitive functioning in real-world contexts (Barlett,
1932), a perspective on biofunctional cognition (Iran-Nejad, Marsh, & Clements, 1992), and an elaboration on one or more of these
views (Weinberg, 1989; Resnick, 1987a; Sternberg, 1982).

When other views are incorporated with the theories of Piaget (1970), such as the popular writings of Weinberg (1989), Resnick
1987a), Sternberg (1982), and Gardner (1985), among others, there are contrasting theoretical and practical perspectives on how
children learn, the nature of higher-order thinking skills, and how teachers should engage pupils. Therefore, constructivist theory in
education is much less clearly developed than it is as any specific psychological theory.

This article addresses issues that relate to the potential effectiveness of constructivism as an educational movement by
reemphasizing its original assumptions in Piagetian theory. In particular, we focus on the relationship of Piaget's constructivism and
more recent developments in biofunctional cognition and how these relate to constructivism as an educational movement.

Bringing Constructivism into The Classroom

In theory, constructivism in education means that teachers will embrace a holistic way of thinking about the nature of learning,
something quite apart from the methodology of direct instruction. Rather than viewing learning as decontextualized, in constructivism
it is assumed that learning occurs in while experiences and that part experiences must be learned only within the context of whole
experiences. Constructivism holds that knowledge does not have a separate existence from the physical nervous system; it cannot
exist in some complete form outside the learner and be internalized, stored, and reproduced at some later time.

Constructivism in the classroom encounters obstacles from deeply entrenched educational theory and practice: (a) autonomy of
knowledge as a separate produce and (b) simplification by isolation (Iran-Nejad, McKeachie, & Berlinere, 1990; Iran-Nejad & Ortony,
1984). Both assumptions are antithetical to constructivism. Information processing theories (e.g. Neisser, 1967; Rumelhart, 1980) and
behaviorism have formed the bedrock of popular educational theory, and they justify the process-product curriculum for direct
instruction. In principle, learning has been viewed as essentially a matter of storing information for later recall. The typical school
curriculum is based on a structure where important knowledge is identified for the student to acquire, often expressed in the form of
task analyses and behavioral objectives. Within this framework, teachers impart such knowledge by breaking it down (simplification)
into manageable pieces for easy internalization by students.

Alternatives to behavioral and cognitive theories have existed for a long time in the works of functionalists such as Dewey (1896),
Angell (1904), and Bartlett (1932). The functionalist research view (a) rejects the assumption of simplification by isolation, (b) focuses
on how nervous systems have evolved to function in real-world contexts, and (c) objects to the view of learning as the long-term
storage of knowledge. In particular, Bartlett (1932) noted the dangers associated with the assumption of simplification by isolation and
the benefits of the method of simplification by integration (see Iran-Nejad, McKeachie, & Berliner, 1990).

In the typical classroom the predominant teaching model is direct instruction, meaning that the teacher's central role in the classroom
is to transmit knowledge to learners and students must directly absorb information presented by the teacher (Rosenshine & Stevens,
1986; Good & Brophy, 1991). This process has been based on information processing theory (Rumelhart, 1980). The student's role is
reception and compliance (Ausubel, 1963, 1968). In this model the teacher's performance in front of students is critical, and in many
school districts teachers are evaluated for their ability to establish "effective" eye contact, use different kinds of questions, pause in
explanations to allow pupil reflection, use of a variety of concepts, and redirect student question, and so forth a process of
disassembling knowledge into small bits for students to comprehend.

Presumably in the constructivist classroom it should be much different, where students, instead of the teacher, organize information,
explore the learning environment, conduct learning activities, and monitor their own learning. Constructivism requires teachers to
focus on depth of understanding and to assume a supporting or "reflective" role while students construct meaning for themselves and
engage in critical thinking and problem solving.

Much of the impetus for constructivism as an educational movement stems from a reaction to the over-reliance in classrooms on rote
memorization which is regarded as a serious problem in education (Lipman, 1991). Many critics of education insist the most important
goal of school should be to teach children how to think and solve problems. Some school curricula have been based on learner-
centered constructivism to promote students who can function successfully in real-world contexts (e.g., Anderson & Roth, 1989; Roth,
1989). Recognizing that students master only those activities they actually practice (Anderson & Roth, 1989), an assumption in line
with constructivism as well as with rote learning and drill-and-practice philosophy, some constructivists are intent on teaching pupils to
use scientific knowledge in the same way as scientifically literate adults.

While it is true that Piaget compared children to naive scientists, his focus was actually on how children's thinking is different from
adults. Piaget proposed that at all levels - the developing organism, the mind, and society - the whole affects the parts. It is the
relationship between parts and the whole that creates organization. Thus, the evolving mind of the child and the progress of scientific
inquiry travel parallel paths. Teaching adult-like thinking skills to children is not Piagetian, although it may be Piagetian constructivism
as he has been reinterpreted.

Many critics and researchers lament the fact that students who can answer complex questions and solve problems are unable to
explain the underlying reasons or methods they use to reach their conclusions (Staver, 1989; Swamy, 1987). This is also an annual
complaint when results of national testing programs are announced, such as the national Assessment of Educational Progress.
However, any successful application of this idea requires an understanding of why those who can truly solve problems at various
levels fail to provide reasonable explanations of the "thinking processes" that led them to their solutions. For teachers to "improve
thinking" implies a thorough understanding of internal mental development, external forces, and the constantly changing relationship
between internal and external states.

Changing students' thinking presents a unique obstacle in education. According to Walberg (1991): ... "Students' reasoning is often
mistaken but logically consistent, confidently held, and difficult to change" (Walberg, 1991, p. 55). Kamiloff-Smith and Inhelder (1975)
reported that children are highly resistant to changing theories, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This
implies that a detailed understanding of constructivism is essential for successfully promoting genuine change in student thinking, but
if we are to influence thinking processes directly, we must first know how they develop.

In attempts to develop computerized expert systems and artificial intelligence, human experts in various fields are typically incapable
of explaining to computer programmers how they reach their conclusions. Their reasoning is not evident, even to themselves, leaving
others the difficult task of observing and asking questions to reveal their secrets. This seemingly paradoxical implication of
constructivism makes its application to education more difficult than it seems.

There are other challenges that require delving much more deeply into constructivism than is generally considered in education. How
do we find the correct mixture of teacher control and student freedom in learning? What kind of learning environment provides
students with a sense of ownership of their own learning? Constructivism does not relinquish teacher control of the classroom, as is
frequently implied, and neither does a sense of ownership mean collecting students' ideas and teaching them back to them. The latter
imply a focus on the product, which is much more akin to traditional methods. For example, Yager (1991) recommends using
students' own questions or ideas to guide the teacher's lesson: using students' thinking, experiences, and interest to drive classroom
activities; posing open-ended questions; encouraging elaboration on their questions and responses; asking for explanations of events
and situations, prediction of consequences; and encouraging students to practice self-analysis, the collection of evidence to support
ideas, and reformulation of ideas. Although these may be regarded as constructivist teaching behaviors, they leave intact many of the
same strategies inherent in the traditional process-product and direct instruction models (Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986; Good &
Brophy, 1991).

Constructivism: Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget's theory is constructivist because it implies the process of building, creating, or making mental structures instead of merely
absorbing or reproducing products. To Piaget, the child's mind is self-organized by a constant antagonism between internal,
subjective mental states and external reality. In Piagetian theory there is no objective ontological reality. According to this view,
knowledge does not exist as a separate product ready to be unloaded in the classroom and consumed by the student. Knowledge is
representative of existing reality for each individual.

Knowledge is not known by organisms simply by means of obvious acquisition, but all knowledge is self-created. As human
intelligence emerges, correspondence between "reality" and individual constructions of reality progress to a level of distinction
between subjective and objective experiences, and is ultimately capable of dealing with the nature of physical relationships to form an
objective world view that is consistently refined by experience. This progression occurs because of the reciprocal effects of
assimilation the accommodation, constantly forced to attain an equilibrium between subjective and objective states.

Piaget used constructivism to explain and not merely describe cognitive development (Flannagan, 1991). He concluded that children
engage in qualitatively different kinds of thinking as they pass through various stages of development, meaning they do not learn by
practicing adult knowledge. Piaget discounted the relative importance of maturation and was interested in the processes that
emerged as children discarded previous ways of thinking for new ones. Intellectual growth results from attempts of the child to solve
problems, which, in turn, causes the child to continually reconstruct the external world through personal experience as internal
representations.

Constructivism is described throughout Piagetian investigations, including investigations with class inclusion, physical causality,
language, and the various applications of his classical tests to investigate concrete and formal thought. Although the tasks required of
children by Piaget were very clearly arranged like a scientific investigation, children were free to respond in any manner. Piaget was
intent on discovering the differences in a child's thinking and what the child can or cannot do without adult assistance or instruction at
any stage of development. But unlike the eager parent or teacher wanting a child to understand, dialogues of Piaget's interactions
with children reveal a continual probing, an interrogation with no feedback. Therefore, we have little guidance from Piaget about
instructional matters, but if constructivism to be useful in directing theories of learning it must account for instruction.

Constructivism and Instruction

Although learning environments can stimulate knowledge construction they cannot have a direct influence on such structures. As
Piaget (1959) commented, "these influences do not imprint themselves upon the child as on a photographic plate; they are
'assimilated,' i.e., deformed by the living being who comes under their sway, and they are incorporated into his own substance" (p.
256). Piaget (1969) explained, "according to this view, the organizing activity of the subject must be considered just as important as
the connections inherent in the external stimuli, for the subject becomes aware of these connections only to the degree that he can
assimilate them by means of his existing structures" (p. 5). Adult rules, standards, criteria, and many kinds of memorization required
of students are simply imposed, nor can they necessarily be regarded as part of a child's own knowledge.

If children construct but do not internalize knowledge, how does this occur? Piaget used the concepts of assimilation and
accommodation to explain the process. He concluded that the child constructs knowledge through the interplay of egocentric
encounters with intervening reality. However, in Piaget's theory the processes that control knowledge creation are unclear. As
presented by Piaget, assimilation and accommodation are vague and insufficient to explain learning; they do not expose the
processes or relate them to the sources that regulate them, although it is clear from Piaget's writings that both the context and the
child's reactions to it cause disturbances of the mental processes toward construction. In many conversations with children recorded
by Piaget, there are important clues that may explain what processes stimulate and accompany the construction of knowledge. For
example, children often preferred certain activities over others. Interest, curiosity, and surprise played an important role, but these
circumstances typically received no elaboration by Piaget who, as an interrogator, observer, and recorder, ignored such reaction, but
they are of intense interest to the teacher.

As we have indicated, Piaget's notions of assimilation and accommodation must not be equated with constructive internalization of
externally available knowledge. According to Piaget, assimilation is an active response to a minor perturbation, and accommodation
is an active response to a major perturbation of the child's existing representations of the world, when new experiences do not
conform to internal expectations, when the child is confused or astonished by something at variance with personal expectations or
beliefs about how reality ought to be.

Under the influence of the computer-inspired information processing theory (Niesser, 1967), it has been fashionable in education to
describe construction as breaking down externally available knowledge into pieces, often known as features, and piecing them back
together by connections (Rumelhart, 1977). This model seems to be consistent with common approaches to disassembling
knowledge for effective teaching (Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986; Good & Brophy, 1991), using task analysis and behavioral
objectives, and developing lesson plans. This type of constructive internalization is said to occur and continue consciously until the
connections among features become strong and automatic through repetitions (Anderson, 1990). The internalization-automatization
view of learning is clearly not what Piaget meant by construction, although this is the theoretical basis for most school learning.

In all levels (cell, organism, species), there are no isolated parts or elements, everything is dependent upon the whole that pervades
it. Rather than the parts determining the whole, or the whole existing without regard for the parts, the whole and the parts form a
reciprocal system that sustains the viability of all. Piaget's terminology may be vague but his views based on genetic epistemology
may be vague but his views based on genetic epistemology are consistent with organismic biological functioning. Thus, we can clarify
Piaget's concept without altering his theory significantly.

The Brain's Biofunctional Structures and Processes

Recent research on biofunctional cognition has led to the conclusion that learning ought to be viewed as reorganization rather than
internalization of knowledge (Iran-Nejad, 1990). Piaget's developmental theory of assimilation and accommodation may be
reinterpreted as involving reorganizational learning processes. Assimilation occurs when children reorganize external information to
bring it in line with their internal knowledge, and accommodation occurs when they reorganize their internal knowledge to gain new
insights into their prior understanding of the external world. This interpretation of Piaget's notion of constructivism as assimilation and
accommodation, as opposed to knowledge internalization, coasts a new light on this other developmental concepts such as
conservation and adaptation. It is compatible with his notion of developmental stages, and extend this theory without significantly
changing it.

Piaget used schema in his writings, a term that has caused considerable confusion in the educational literature. We propose
construction as the gradual development of thematic knowledge (Iran-Nejad, 1989), which may be related to but not equal to
"schema" or mental structures of constructivism. An important qualification, in line with Piaget's theory, is that schemas are not
program-like, long-term memory structures of modern information processing theory. From a biofunctional viewpoint, the brain
continually retains live representations or constructions under active (intentional) and dynamic (spontaneous) self-regulation (Iran-
Neja, 1989, 1990).

There is direct and live awareness of ongoing constructions through executive self-regulation, which occurs actively when the system
consciously and intentionally regulates the activity of its own components, as in problem-solving, and through nonexecutive self-
regulation, which occurs dynamically when components of the system regulate their activity spontaneously according to biological
principles of organization. Dynamic activity is much more extensive than conscious, intentional activity. This is evident in the
preponderance of Piagetian research that reveals that children are often unaware of underlying reasoning and have great difficulty
describing theft thoughts when asked to explain theft decisions, similar to the difficulty of experts mentioned above. Children can sing
but do not generate a theory of music; they speak but do not list the rules of grammar; they can solve problems but are unable to
specify their underlying reasoning.

We have reinterpreted Piaget's concepts of assimilation and accommodation as involving reorganizational learning processes, and
his notion of schemas as ongoing themes. We can give a more elaborate reinterpretation of the learner-centered aspect of Piaget's
theory in terms of biofunctional cognition. To understand learning from the learner's perspective, we must understand biofunctional
serf-regulation. The main question relates to how the brains' reorganizational processes are regulated.

Sources of Self-Regulation

Reorganization results from the sources of self-regulation that influence knowledge construction: external (or stimulation-regulated),
dynamic (or subsystem-regulated), and active (or person-regulated). Changes in external figures, grounds, or their relationships
(external control) initiate corresponding changes in the form of assimilation or accommodation as defined here, in the relationships of
internal structures, a process which the two internal control sources (dynamic and active) join to regulate. In keeping with Piagetian
theory, we presume that all biological structures tend toward increasingly complex equilibrations of organization.

Construction of knowledge is a process of self-regulation that surpasses simple memory explanations (Palmer & Goetz, 1988;
Schmeck, 1988; Weinstein, Goetz, & Alexander, 1988; Zimmerman & Schunk, 1989). The biofunctional model asserts that
knowledge is thematic live awareness_an evolving and indivisible product of ongoing brain functioning. In this perspective, the central
nervous system is capable of engaging in higher-level functions (those under executive or person-regulated control), because the
individual's attention is not actively involved in monitoring and controlling thousands of processes. This permits extensive control-free
or attention-free constructive activity. Instead of allocating attention to every detail, the central nervous system delegates, so to
speak, attention or responsibility for learning to the subsystems of the nervous system (Iran-Nejad, 1990), which operate dynamically
(or spontaneously).

Constructivism is dynamic intelligence, the parts organize in a coordinated system which work together to solve a problem when the
individual is interested, challenged, or goal directed, but no necessarily aware of the details of the ongoing processes. Because
knowledge is created dynamically, any change in one part has spontaneous (context-determined, as opposed to connection-
determined) implications for the functioning of other parts, a central feature of Piagetian theory considered as part-to-whole
interactions. Every combination of the parts is a new combination and not just an algorithm, switched-on program, or information
retrieval. All information is constantly live, although not always conscious, and even combinations that repeat the past exactly
(memory) are really new combinations; the process reconstructs the past but does not copy it.

Constructivism and Memory

The individual reconstructs the past idiosyncratically. It is possible that intervening knowledge acquired since an event will alter the
reconstruction of the original event, such as recalling things that never happened. This could not occur if recall were connection
determined and program-like. Schwartz and Reisberg (1991) note: "... it appears that the true, objective past is not what is
remembered. Instead, what is preserved is the past-as-understood, with no advantage for the exact event as it actually unfolded (p.
345)." The "past as understood" may encompass a variety of factors, including such aspects as motivation, interest, or state of
receptivity at the time that permit incorporation of new knowledge and give meaning or "understanding" to an event.

An assumption underlying most educational and psychological theories is that the brain is principally a memory system. Confer
(1990) has called for more research on the issues of memory and reflective abstraction in constructivism. Noting that a "storage
container" view of memory has been useful, Confer points out that it has not explained why certain conceptions of children are so
persistent and how reconstruction, rather than retrieval, occurs.

Intelligence probably did not evolve as the nervous system's solution to memory requirements but as a response to problems of
survival in a natural environment (Marsh & Iran-Nejad, 1992). If memory occurs in constructivism, it is because it is constructed for
some internal, personal reason. As Piaget noted, memories are contorted as they are assimilated by the child to meet immediate
needs. Piaget (1969) discounts the importance of memory in learning, although he believed that "image-memory" may play some
part, and he said that not all conservation of the past is memory: "All schemas continue to function independently of 'memory'" (p.
81). This is consistent wit the biofunctional model.

The human nervous system and its processes evolved to solve survival problems in a natural environment, a major concern for most
human beings over the last 50,000 years than. Memory is obviously important but the brain's functional processes are not explicit
memory processes, as proposed by long-term storage metaphors of modern information processing theory (e.g., Rumelhart, 1980) or
by network metaphors of parallel distributed processing connectionism (Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland, & Hinton, 1986). Human
intelligence did not evolve principally as the nervous system's solution to memory requirements (study, reading, writing, and so forth)
but through responses to problems in a natural environment. The very relationship an organism holds on an ongoing basis with its
environment is the context for knowledge creation, not compartmentalized and dissociated. Ong (1982) clarifies this point:

"Human beings in primary oral cultures, those untouched by writing in any form, learn a great deal and possess and practice great
wisdom, but they do not 'study.' ... They learn by apprenticeship - hunting with experienced hunters, for example - by discipleship,
which is a kind of apprenticeship, by listening, by repeating what they hear, by mastering proverbs and ways of combining and
recombining them, by assimilating other formulary material, by participation in a kind of corporate retrospection - not by study in the
strict sense" (p. 9).

In traditional classroom instruction the words of the teacher, words in print, and other activities, including required memorization, are
the major vehicles for "carrying information" to pupils. Children who do not remember well what the teacher said or the content of
books may be considered to have memory and learning problems. But memorizing the knowledge others have created is often not
successful because knowledge is not a ready-made, transferable product but, rather, a product of the learner's thinking created in a
multisource context.

Learning in Context

The child gradually acquires a set of themes that represent the world reliably for most purposes. The learning of abstract knowledge
contained in textbooks requires the same processes as those required in learning the concrete world surrounding the newborn. What
changes is the influence of the three sources of self-regulation and the nature of the internal context where sources of self-regulation
interact.

Any organism must attend deeply and extensively to deal with external events. Internal events may require great attention although
external self-regulation is not apparent. To attract a child's attention and stimulate interest, the school can influence a child in many
ways (films, games, social interactions, and reinforcement). For dynamic learning to occur, alert attention must arise within the child
under internal controls. For learning to follow a natural (authentic) course, curiosity must replace teacher directed questions, reflection
must replace prescriptive resources, and simultaneous construction must replace piecemeal construction. Thematic knowledge must
prevail, not merely the typical categorical knowledge creation expected in classrooms.

We use thematic knowledge to build an internal context to support ongoing sources of self-regulation. But children usually have no
direct experience with the content of school subjects to which they listen or read that is sufficient to build internal contexts. Such
information is irrelevant and does not provoke assimilation and accommodation. Initially, they often lack the experience, and thus
internal structures to support the isolated concepts to which they are exposed. Subsequently, they lack a thematic concept of the
information, making it impossible to alter their views, add to the knowledge, or to reorganize it. Learning that is relegated strictly to
external control of list-like memorization is easily forgotten and not meaningfully related to internal themes. Learning occurs best if it
is related to authentic interest, as implied in dynamic learning. In fact, "good" students usually memorize information to satisfy school
evaluation requirements. This is one reason that performance assessment is advocated instead of factual testing (Weinberg, 1989).
In authentic learning, when a process is replicated, it does so more effectively than before through organic, flexible learning, similar to
equilibration states that support the assimilation and accommodation described by Piaget. The system works by integration and self-
regulation of parts, changing with each reconstruction as new environmental challenges are encountered.

In classroom activities where the teacher talks most of the time, the learner is required to exert a great deal of attention (a difficult
task), comprehend terms the teacher uses (a more difficult task), impose order on the incoming temporal stream of information (an
often impossible task), make judgements about the quality and significance of the information (an unrealistic task), attempt to write
down as much as possible (a torturous task), and memorize for later reproduction the information presumed to be important (for most
students, the only conceivable task). The student must also sit in uncomfortable chairs and do this continually five to six hours a day,
five days a week. There is little opportunity, beyond memorization, to create and act upon new knowledge.
Classroom "learning" is unnatural and something that does not occur in the early years of life when a child learns a language, and
something most adults avoid after they have escaped formal education. The implications of constructivism, and of our elaborations on
it, are to argue that children must have access to the same natural learning processes they employ before the enter school, and later,
outside traditional classroom environments where interest and dynamic functions operate. In the unnatural classroom environment
this does not occur.

Goals may arise for survival needs or for any reason at all. A child who develop interest in butterflies or baseball comes to "know"
things about them for personal reasons, just as our distant ancestors came to know about scavenging, hunting, and gathering, or our
more recent ancestors came to know about building cathedrals. Repetitions of experiences with objects or ideas in the environment
form the cognitive structures of the intellect that, always active, can themselves be interrelated internally through multiple sources.
Thus, one-to-one correspondence or formal operational though are not external realities but are self-constructed knowledge for a
purpose.

Implications for Teaching

Confrey (1990) described how the work of Piaget influenced the development of curricula in various disciplines that sought to weave
organizing concepts into the curriculum beginning in the early grades, but less attention was placed on the fact that children have
idiographic ways of understanding that may differ or conflict with beliefs held by experts. What was ignored, according to Confrey,
was that a child "develops certain perspectives and beliefs that are functionally adaptive, and these perspectives and beliefs may or
may not correspond well with the views of disciplinary experts" (p. 8). On the other hand, although Piaget avoided making
recommendations about how to teach children, this statement provides insight to his thoughts on the matter:

As for those new methods of education that have had the most durable success, and which without doubt constitute the foundation of
tomorrow's active school, they all more or less draw their inspiration from a doctrine of the golden mean, allowing room both for
internal structural maturation and also for the influences of experience and of the social and physical environment. As opposed to the
traditional school, which denies the existence of the first of these factors by identifying the child with the adult from the outset, these
methods take the stages of mental development into account; but, as opposed to those theories based on the idea of purely
hereditary maturation, they also believe in the possibility of influencing that development. (Piaget & Inhelder, 1970, pp. 169-170).

Piaget did not tell us how to "influence" development, but evidently he thought is possible. His closet collaborator, Inhelder,
apparently believed in this possibility. Karmiloff-Smith and Inhelder (1975) employed three active strategies (instruction) in a research
project to investigate the effects of instruction on changing children's thinking during activities.

Teachers want to know exactly what to do to influence development. Thus, schools have eagerly seized the stages of mental
development in an attempt to define the school curriculum and make a cookbook of teaching strategies. Taking the chronological
ages defining Piagetian stages, activities have been developed to teach children, directly, the tasks used by Piaget in assessing
mental development. However, this is not a curriculum. If educators have been dissatisfied they should not blame Piaget, for his
theory has been altered beyond its original intent.

Many educators and psychologists have interpreted Piagetian theories variously as rigid developmental stages or phases that could
be "speeded up" developmentally by a proper curriculum, or as milestones indicating what king of subject matter to teach. To many,
adolescence is that time when the child can finally understand like an adult. Piaget and Inhelder (1958) concluded that the adolescent
can begin to build "systems" or "theories," but the child cannot build systems and "never thinks about his own thought" (p. 339). This
is discouraging to those who would directly influence the child's thought.

A more comprehensive way of influencing experience may be to account for the stages by establishing methods that stimulate mental
development more naturally. In a natural environment, unlike a classroom learning is multisource in nature. This occurs because
divers sources (or factors with diverse origins) are simultaneously available but never when some of the sources are unavailable. In
the artificial classroom, the multisource hypothesis implies that little learning occurs during isolated part-experiences because they
are removed from dynamic experience.

The brain is best considered in terms of its natural exteroceptive sensory interaction with the world, or the relationship between
experience and behavior that Piaget explored, rather than in terms of hypothetical non-biological systems. The brain is engaged
directly and indirectly through all sensory activities. Survival needs and interest are important because they are responsible for
stimulating problem-solving behaviors. The capability for interest and subsequent problem-solving behavior may have been important
in the evolution of the species, and it is evident in dynamic learning. Dynamic learning is also more efficient. Active or deliberate
learning requires executive control and concentration on a certain set of information. Dynamic learning entails spontaneous
delegation of responsibility to processes other than executive control; all processes, however, work simultaneously, which is
compatible with Piagetian constructs of assimilation and accommodation as reorganization of internal knowledge.

In authentic real-world learning, children can use various sources to contribute to learning, but they are greatly limited by less-than
authentic school contexts. As children grow older, their learning becomes increasingly intentional, analytic, and potentially very
sequential because of the academic contexts. This is why, departing from the natural dynamism of the brain, the child engages in
learning activities that are uninteresting. Traditional academic tasks are not generated by the learner. Information is presented as a
product. Lacking natural interest and based on isolated experiences, academic tasks differ significantly from authentic learning.

In the dynamic perspective, the learner is naturally attuned to multiple sources of control. Consider the following learning processes:
attention, inquiry, closure, combination, knowledge creation, and metacognition (Iran-Nejad, 1989). These learning processes are
highly versatile regarding the sources that regulate them. They can operate under the control of external stimulation, as in reactive
attention, surprise, orientation, component independent functioning, categorical knowledge creation, and piecemeal metacognition.
They can operate under deliberate (intentional) control of the individual learner as in paying deliberate attention, self-questioning,
prediction, sequential combination, propositional knowledge creation, and procedural metacognition. And they can operate
dynamically as in alert attention, curiosity, postdiction (understanding with the benefit of hindsight), simultaneous combination,
thematic knowledge creation, and reflective metacognition.

We propose that the very same processes are responsible for learning by the newborn child and the expert alike, because what
varies from one phase of learning to another, in addition to a changing equilibrium, are the internal sources of control that regulate the
operation of these processes. In the traditional classroom the child is not permitted to use whole-experiences or to learn dynamically
but is usually limited to narrow "active" processes: concentrating in order to pay attention, posing self-questions or creating
mnemonics. It may be true that experts engage in self-questioning or create mnemonics also, but more often this is because of
metacognition that fits into a comprehensive strategy directed by internal knowledge structures. In a dynamic mode, holding a child's
attention means controlling the internal structures or external sources of input that stimulate high interest. Paying attention is an
active process that may be forced upon the child by the environment or the teacher. It may also be considered as part of the learner's
intention to master some information.

Considering traditional teaching from the child's point of view, classroom learning is mysterious, confusing, and arbitrary. As
Pechman (1992) notes: "schools try to teach children to use the formal tools of academic disciplines - vocabulary, mathematical
formulas, dictionaries, scientific procedures - but many children find few opportunities outside of school to practice what they are
taught. The resulting in authenticity of classroom activity makes it difficult for children to see how school learning applies to their lives"
(p. 33).

The challenge for education is to conduct research and to devise classroom learning activities that coincide with constructive or
dynamic principles. Such activities must permit multiple sources of control to interact with the natural learning processes that create
knowledge. Attention must be directed and controlled by the individual, as an outgrowth of interest and problem-solving behavior, not
controlled by the environment or forced by the teacher. Curiosity must be stimulated for intrinsic learning.

Many learning activities in classrooms are directed by prediction, pre-reading questions, and study skills. These serve to focus
attention of the learner on what should be remembered or memorized, or what the teacher or the author thinks is important.
Postdiction is a more authentic strategy because it causes the learner to reevaluate, reinterpret, and reorganize internal structures. In
fact, Piaget and Inhelder (1964) noted:

An assimilatory schema becomes anticipatory in relation to the comparisons which lie in the future when it has undergone a sufficient
degree of re-moulding and readaptation in the light of hindsight ... The interplay of hindsight and anticipation is what lies behind the
most remarkable feature of these observations: the fact that our subjects can abstract qualities which are common to quite a large
number of elements. (p. 246).

The information incorporated and reshaped (reorganized) by the learner should be thematic in structure, not sequential and
mnemonic. Propositional and categorical knowledge rely on algorithms and rote but not judgment. Higher-order thinking skills emerge
from the natural brain activity of the learner who has learned to use knowledge, connect old and new knowledge, and derive
conclusions based on personal experiences. But this kind of knowledge may be very difficult to assess and certainly difficult for the
learner to explain in terms of a cognitive development and to "listen to and observe" children very closely in order to determine what
kinds of mental operations are used in approaching particular tasks. Although this is something rarely attempted in traditional
classrooms, even in the constructivist classroom it requires different training than that which is now provided in teacher education or
alternative certification programs.

Conclusions

Advances in the ability to influence cognitive development can be made through research in the learning processes (attention,
inquiry, closure, combination, knowledge creation, and metacognition) and their sources of control (external, deliberate, and
dynamic). While considerable attention in psychology and education has been devoted to the learning processes, much of it guided
by Piagetian constructivism, little research has focused on the interaction of processes and the sources that regulate them in a
dynamic system. Constructivism, as a force in education, should proceed as a process of continuing research about how natural
brains engage in authentic learning. It should also unfold as a process of continuing research into the factors that turn classrooms
into inviting, multisource environments. Thus far, however, constructivism has no clear models to reveal how logical knowledge is
constructed by processes of reflection and abstraction in classrooms.

For the teacher, constructivism requires the role of a reflective practitioner. The teacher's role is changed to keen observations,
guessing, and hunches about how to create a proper setting for students to construct knowledge for themselves. Reflective teachers
refrain from giving answers directly but may use prompting questions that encourage further thought and exploration, based on
intuition about the students' internal states.

Equally important and little understood is the role of the classroom social environment. Piaget contended that both logical and social
knowledge are created because of conflict and arguments with peers, and very little because of questioning and explanations. As
Piaget and other have pointed out, the peer group causes cognitive disequilibrium. Children can motivate, challenge, and stimulate
knowledge creation, apparently much better than adults. It is also clear from Piaget's early interests and his later writings that he
regarded intellectual development of the child as a component within a social system.

Although much of a child's thinking is egocentric and communications are not socialized (Piaget, 1955), it is important to recognize
that "the fact of being or not being communicable is not an attribute that can be added to thought from the outside, but is a
constitutive feature of profound significance for the shape and structure which reasoning may assume" (p. 67). The child must learn
communication because of external forces making it necessary to be communication because of external forces making it necessary
to be communicate and to be understood. Piaget suggested that it may be through quarreling "that children first come to feel the need
for making themselves understood" (p. 83), a point of view highly regarded by others, such as Frey and Lupart (1987) and Liben
(1987). It is at these junctures where the interactions of the child with adult models and other children can shed light on the potential
impact of instruction, perhaps as dynamic contexts that stimulate the child to action, as in wanting to be understood or to prevail in an
argument or a point of view.

While some research has focused on how children learn in specific disciplines, particularly mathematics, and science, constructivist
educational theory lacks answers to many important questions. What are the processes that make content interesting to a child and
attract and sustain attention, intrinsically rather than by relying on extrinsic reinforcement schedules or the Premack principle? What
steps or procedures attract attention, hold attention, and lead to self-directed attention to the school's subject matter? What events,
behaviors, and types of environments or interactions stimulate curiosity? How does curiosity lead to self-questioning? What external
events in the environment can be intentionally introduced - as attention catching and surprising - to invoke interest? What can we
learn from the home environment and children's play, or the successful entertainment industry that eclipse the classroom in driving
student interest and motivation? Can examination of these contexts lead to implications for a classroom environment? How can
school activities be developed that use simultaneity and produce thematic knowledge? How do we find the correct mixture of teacher
control and student freedom in learning? What kind of learning environment provides students with a sense of ownership of their own
learning? How can we foster basic and higher-order thinking skills simultaneously and not sequentially? How do we integrate skills
and curriculum content?

As Romberg and Carpenter (1986) have reported, we know much more about how children learn mathematics and other disciplines
than we know about how to use such knowledge for instruction. We need to know how to apply such knowledge to teaching. Confer
(1990) has also noted that, although there should be integration of teaching and learning perspectives, knowledge about how to
teach children to develop conceptions is lacking. Knowing the child's cognition will be essential but insufficient for teaching.

The problem of instruction is captured by Kindsbetter, Wilen, and Ishler (1989):

To the extent that teachers operate primarily on the basis of personal experience, they perform analogously to the tribal medicine
man. Through his use of both mystique and proficiency with primitive medicines, he may actually perform a valuable service to his
fellow tribespeople. His practice, however, lacks a rationally developed base. Little change occurs in his practice from generation to
generation because there is essentially no understanding of the causes, and instead simply a recognition and treatment of symptoms
(p. 8-9).

For education to progress on a rational basis, we believe it will arise with research that accepts the natural brain as the context for
study in a natural learning environment. While constructivism already provides a solid direction toward answers to many questions,
we still must learn how to implement "constructivist teaching." We may achieve classroom environments where children ask
questions, erect theories, pursue solutions, engage in collaborative work, and simultaneously enjoy school while they learn. But
constructivism must not be some kind of program added to the curriculum, a revision of direct teaching, or merely a way of teaching
higher-order thinking skills. We have argued that it must draw upon the sources of control we have described above. It is here that we
are more likely to find answers to questions about learning and rational instruction, and only then can we begin to organize classroom
contexts compatible with the natural brain.

Constructivism may be the basis for reforming education and improving "thinking" skills. However, there is no assurance it will be
better than the current system unless we answer some important questions. As Lipman (1991) said:

If we fail to come to grips with the practice - the ways in which reflective education can actually take place in the classroom - we will
be just as likely to fall prey to misunderstanding as those lives are filled with practice and devoid of theory (p. 15).

Another problem is that direct instruction, which has been based on several decades of process-product research, has been
incorporated in most teacher training curricula, state educational standards, and even legislation. The "effective" teaching methods
derived from this research tradition have been summarized and recommended as generalizable methods to be applied in any
classroom, regardless of content. A fundamental assumption in direct instruction, owing to both reductionist influences of behaviorism
and process-product research, is that knowledge exist as a separate entity that can be decontextualized and broken into small pieces
to be learned. Research in constructivism, particularly domain specific research, is incompatible with direct instruction, philosophically
and structurally, and assessing children's conceptions and teachers' thinking are not consonant with standardized test criteria.

The changing environment of education can create complications, such as reconciling constructivism with such trends as outcomes-
based education - which is founded on the intention to define, design, deliver, and document instruction and assessment in terms of
intended outcomes. Outcomes can apparently be intermediate or minimal competencies (mastery) and developmental outcomes
(integrated products). Thus, the emphasis is on mastery, which contrasts sharply with constructivism. Outcomes-based education is
employed to change schools, hold them accountable, and monitor them based on expressed outcomes. Standards, even if
documented in "real-world" ways, can be antagonistic to constructivism, depending upon the structure developed by the school
curriculum. Alternative or authentic assessment (portfolio being one example) is not necessarily congruent with constructivism if the
curriculum is based on outcomes-based education or other models for accountability.

For knowledge to be considered more than information and for children to become constructive in the classroom, the curriculum must
be changed and we must develop methods of constructivist teaching. Constructivist concepts are intuitively appealing but there is
little evidence that we know how to capture the interests of children or to affect goal-directed behavior. If constructivism is to succeed
as a method of classroom learning, there is much to learn about the ways to make learning appealing, interesting, goal directed, and
relevant - in other words more natural.
Perhaps almost everyone can agree we should teach children to think, but we need to be certain that we agree on what we mean by
thinking and know how to teach it. While students' needs cannot "be fulfilled merely by raising educational standards and requiring
teachers to administer increasingly complex curricula developed out of context" (Black & Ammon, 1992, p. 333), we need carefully
conceived models to replace what now exists. Obviously, constructivism in the traditional classroom will encounter significant
obstacles which, without considerable redesign of the entire process, sets up an attempt to resolve competing philosophies that may
result in a corruption of both approaches to learning. If the death knell sounds for constructivism in education, as it has for so many
educational fads in the past that were hurried into classrooms by enthusiastic teachers and charismatic leaders, it may fail either
because it was misunderstood or we did not know enough to implement if effectively.

References

Anderson, J.R. (1990). Cognitive psychology and its implications (3rd ed.). New York: Freeman.

Anderson, C.W., & Roth, J.J. (1989). Teaching for meaningful and self-regulated learning of science. In J. Brophy (ed.), Advances in
research on teaching: Vol. 2. A research annual. Volume 1 (265-309). Greenwich, CN: JAI Press, Inc.

Ausubel, D. (1963). The psychology of meaningful verbal learning. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Ausubel, D. (1968). Educational psychology: A cognitive view. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Bartlett, S.F. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press.

Baumann, J.F. (1991). Basal reading programs and the deskilling of teachers: A critical examination of the argument. Paper
presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL. (ERIC Document Service No. Ed
329 906).

Berliner, D.C. (1986). In pursuit of the expert pedagogue. Educational Researcher, 15(7), 5-13.

Black, A. and Ammon, P. (1992). A developmental-constructivist approach to teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education. 43(5),
323-335.

Confrey, J. (1990). A review of the research on student conceptions in mathematics, science, and programming. In C.B. Cazden
(Ed.), Review of Research in Education, volume 16. Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association, p. 3-56.

Duckworth, E. (1987). "The having of wonderful ideas" and other essays on teaching and learning. New York: Teachers College
Press.

Easley, J.A. (1977). On clinical studies in mathematics education. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, Information Reference
Center for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education.

Elmore, R.F. (1991a). Paradox of innovation in education: Cycles of reform and the resilience of teaching. Unpublished manuscript,
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Elmore, R.R. (1991b). Teaching, learning, and organization: School restructuring and the recurring dilemmas of reform. Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago.

Flannagan, O. (1991). The science of the mind. (2nd Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Frey, P.S. and Lupart, J.D. (1987). Cognitive processes in children's learning. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Gardner, H. (1985). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Good, T.L. & Brophy, J.E. (1991). Looking in Classrooms. (5th Ed.). New York: Harper Collins.

Iran-Nejad, A. (1980). The schema: A structural or a functional pattern (Tech. Rep. No. 159). Urbana: University of Illinois, Center for
the Study of Reading. (ERIC Document Service No. ED 182 735).

Iran-Nejad, A. (1989). A nonconnectionist schema theory of understanding surprise-ending stories. Discourse Processes, 12,
127-148.

Iran-Nejad, A. (1990). Active and dynamic self-regulation of learning processes. Review of Educational Research, 60, 573-602.

Iran-Nejad, A., McKeachie, W.J., & Berliner, D.C. (1990). The multisource nature of learning: All introduction. Review of Educational
Research, 60, 509-515.

Iran-Nejad, A., & Ortony, A. (1984). A biofunctional model of distributed mental content, mental structures, awareness, and attention.
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 5, 173-210.

Kamii, C.K. (1985). Young children reinvent arithmetic: Implications of Piaget's theory. New York: Columbia University, Teachers
College Press.

Kamiloff-Smith, A., & Inhelder, B. (1975). If you want to get ahead, get a theory. Cognition 3(3), 195-212.

Kindsbetter, R., Wilen, W., & Ishler, M. (1989). Dynamics of effective teaching. New York: Longman.

Liben, L.D. (Ed.). (1987). Development and learning: Conflict or congruence? Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Lieberman, A., Darling-Hammond, L., & Zukerman, D. (1991). Early lessons in restructuring schools. New York: Teachers College,
Columbia University, National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching.

Levine, M. (Ed.). (1992). Professional practice schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

Lipman, M. (1991). Thinking in education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marsh, G.E., II & Iran-Nejad, A. (1992). Intelligence: A monolithic concept. Psychonomic Journal, July.

Murphy, J. (1991). Restructuring schools: Capturing and assessing the phenomena. New York: Teachers College Press.

Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Newmann, F.M. (1991). What is a restructured school? A framework to clarify means and ends. Issues in Restructuring Schools,
Issue Report No. 1, 3-5, 16. Madison, WI: Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools.

Ong, W.J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.

Palmer, D.J., & Goetz, E.T. (1988). Selection and use of study strategies: The role of the studier's beliefs about self and strategies. In
E.C. Weinstein, E.T. Goetz, & P.A. Alexander (Eds.), Learning and study strategies. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 41-61.

Pechman, E.M. (1992). Child as meaning maker: The organizing theme for professional practice schools. In Levine, M. (Ed.).
Professional practice schools. New York: Teachers College Press, 25-62.

Peterson, P., & McCarthy, S. (1991, April). Reflections on restructuring in one school. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Educational Research Association, Chicago.

Piaget, J. (1955). Language and thought of the child. (2nd Ed.) New York: Meridian Books.

Piaget, J. (1959). Judgment and reasoning in the child. Totowa, New Jersey: Littlefield, Addams & Company.

Piaget, J. (1969). Science of education and the psychology of the child. New York: Grossman Publishers.

Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1964). The early growth of logic in the child. New York: W.W. Norton Co.

Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1970). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books.

Resnick, L. (1987a). Education and learning to think. Washington, DC: National Academy.

Resnick, L. (1987b). Constructing knowledge in school. In L.S. Liben (Ed.), Development and learning: Conflict or congruence?
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 19-50.

Resnick, L.B., & Klopfer, L.E. (1989). Toward the thinking curriculum: An overview. In Toward the thinking curriculum: Current
cognitive research. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Romberg, T. & Carpenter, T. (1986). Research on teaching and learning mathematics: Two disciplines of scientific inquiry. In MC,
Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook for research on teaching. New York: Macmillian, 850-873.

Rosenshine, B. and Stevens, R. (1986). Teaching functions. In (M.C. Wittrock, ed.) Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed.). New
York: Macmillan Publishing Co.

Roth, L. (1989). Science education: It's not enough to "do" or "relate." American Educator, 13(4), 16-48.

Rumelhart, D.E. (1977). Toward and interactive model of reading. In S. Dornic (Ed.), Attention and performance, VI. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.

Rumelhart, D.E. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In R.J. Spiro, B.C. Bruce, & W.F. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical
issues in reading comprehension: Perspectives from cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and education. Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum, 33-58.

Rumelhart, D.E. (1984). The emergence of cognition from sub-symbolic processes. Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Conference of
the Cognitive Science Society, Boulder, CO: Institute of Cognitive Science and the University of Colorado, 59-62.
Rumelhart, D.E., & McClelland, J.L. (1986). On learning the past tenses of English verbs. In J.L. McClelland, D.E. Rumelhart, & the
PDP Research Group (Eds.), Parallel distributed processing (Vol. 2, 216-271). Cambridge, MA: NIT Press.

Rumelhart, D.E., & Ortony, A. (1977). The representation of knowledge in memory. In R.C. Anderson, R.J. Spiro, & W.E. Montague
(Eds.), Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Rumelhart. D.E., Smolensky, P., McClelland, J.L., & Hinton, G.E. (1986). Schemata and Sequential thought processes in PDP
models. In J.L. McClelland, D.E. Rumelhart, & the DBP Research Group (Eds.), Parallel distributed processing (Vol. 2, 7-57).
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Schmeck, R.R. (1988). Learning strategies and learning styles. NY: Plenum.

Schunk, D.H. (1991). Learning theories: An educational perspective. New York: Macmillan.

Schwartz. B. & Reisberg, D. (1991). Learning and memory. New York: W.W. Norton, Co.

Staver, J.R. (1989). A summary of research in science education. Science Education, 73, 245-341.

Sternberg, R.J. (1982). Reasoning, problem solving, and intelligence. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of human intelligence. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 225-307.

von Glaserfeld, E. (1984). An introduction to radical constructivism. In P. Watzlawick (Ed.), The invented reality. New York: Norton,
17-14.

Swamy, A.N. (1987). An analysis of students' conceptions of pressure-related gas behavior. (Doctoral dissertation, University of
Maryland, 1987). Dissertation Abstracts International. 47, 3386A.

Walberg, H.J. (1991). Improving school science in advanced and developing countries. Review of Educational Research, 61 (1).
25-70.

Weinberg, R.A. (1989). Intelligence and IQ: Landmark issues and great debates. American Psychologist, 44(2), 98-104.

Weinstein, E.C., Goetz, E.T., & Alexander, P.A. (1988). Learning and study strategies. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Yager, R.E. (1991). The constructivist learning model. The Science Teacher, 51, 52-57.

Zimmerman, B.J., & Schunk, D.H. (1989). Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: Theory, research, and practice. New
York: Springer-Verlag.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1995 Project Innovation Austin LLC

https://projectinnovationaustin.com/
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
Iran-Nejad, Asghar. "Constructivism as substitute for memorization in learning: meaning is created by learner." Education, vol. 116,
no. 1, fall 1995, pp. 16+. Gale Academic OneFile,
link.gale.com/apps/doc/A17855126/AONE?u=tacoma_comm&sid=googleScholar&xid=4c6c5e21. Accessed 8 Sept. 2025.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A17855126