What is Constructivism, Really? (And Why Do Educational Reactionaries Have To Lie About It?)

Ernst von Glasersfeld, resting

What is radical constructivism? It is an unconventional approach to the

problems of knowledge and knowing. It starts from the assumption that

knowledge, no matter how it be defined, is in the heads of persons, and that the

thinking subject has no alternative but to construct what he or she knows on

the basis of his or her own experience. What we make of experience constitutes

the only world we consciously live in. It can be sorted into many kinds, such as

things, self, others, and so on. But all kinds of experience are essentially

subjective, and though I may find reasons to believe that my experience may

not be unlike yours, I have no way of knowing that it is the same. The

experience and interpretation of language are no exception. (Ernst von Glasersfeld, RADICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM: A Way of Knowing and Learning, p. 1) 

Twenty years after I first encountered the terms "constructivism" and "radical constructivism," I still find ample evidence that most people who use these words haven't the foggiest idea what they're talking about. The latest in what appears to be an endless line of pundits who can't seem to get right any of the obvious things about constructivism, radical or otherwise, is Nakonia (Niki) Hayes, a retired Seattle teacher and principal, now residing in Waco, Tx. Ms. Hayes has a web site dedicated to the life and work of the late John Saxon, who as a retired Air Force officer living in Oklahoma, determined that he had THE answer to all the ills he perceived were plaguing American mathematics education.

Writing about Saxon's view that US math teaching and learning were in a "crisis" is a dicey business. It's not because Saxon was dead-wrong, which would be easy to demonstrate and dismiss, but because he was right, but mostly for the wrong reasons. This theme plagues anyone like me who tries to make intelligible commentary the never-ending assault on US public education in general and on math education in particular. Yes, there are some major problems with our education system and certainly our entire approach to teaching mathematics is off the mark for most kids. It's not a coincidence that Americans both despise and fear mathematics, are clearly ignorant of a great deal of the pre-college curriculum, and see no point in studying it (so many students eschew taking non-required math that there is a something like 50% drop in enrollments at each successive level past minimal requirements. The cost to our society is far deeper than merely the xenophobic complaint about having to "import" engineers, etc., from Asia: we have a democracy in which understanding basic statistics and economics is vital to informed decision-making on both a personal and political level, yet few people are well-positioned to do so.

However, there's nothing new about that. And it was true long before John Saxon rode in on his white horse to save us all. And in fact, Saxon's approach is unlikely to help matters, in that it is such a rigid, mechanistic, and procedurally-oriented presentation of math, lacking only the slightest logic in how the topics are arranged to make it at least vaguely coherent. Even an anti-progressive reformer like Cal-Berkeley's emeritus professor of mathematics, H. H. Wu, openly criticized the Saxon series at a state textbook hearing:

"But I think that what perhaps disturbs me the most about Saxon is  to read through it, I myself do not get the feeling that I am reading something that when that the children use it they would even have a remotely correct impression of what mathematics is about... ...you never see any methods, your never see any flesh, nothing no connective tissue, you only see the bare stuff. A little bit of this is okay, but when you read through a whole volume of it really I am very, very, uneasy... There is no rhyme or reason about the sequencing of the topics. "...you get the feeling that if my students use this, how could they not get the idea that mathematics is just a collection of techniques? If that is the case, what happens to them when they go on to middle school, and then to high school, and after that, God forbid, you might be facing them in your freshman calculus classes. And that is a frightening thought!"

This ringing condemnation of the entire conceptualization of mathematics inherent in the Saxon series is systematically ignored by Saxon promoters. When confronted to respond to it, they either refuse to address what Wu said, claim that he didn't say it, claim that he didn't mean it, or claim that he was only speaking about one or two Saxon books, as if the others in the series have a different philosophy or execution, which they most decidedly do not.  And what choice do these anti-progressives really have? They can't dismiss Prof. Wu as some "fuzzy" mathematics educator: he's been consistently anti-"fuzzy" as long as I can remember hearing his name (going back to about 1993), and he's a mathematician of note at a top university. Yet, ignore this critique is all they dare do. To truly struggle with it honestly would be the undoing of their Saxon mythos.

I offer this background on Saxon because Nakonia Hayes brings to her mis-analysis/critique of "constructivism" ("Has constructivism increased special-education enrollment in public schools?"
a worshipful belief in John Saxon the man and the pedagogue. It is thus unsurprising that her take on a theory of learning that she associates as responsible for, if not all the world's evils, at least every educational idea that she despises, quite possibly because these practices, tools, teaching methods, etc., pose threats to the supposed supremacy of Saxon and his math books.

So if, as I contend, Hayes gets constructivism completely wrong, what is constructivism? Here is something I wrote at the request of Lynn Stoddard, a veteran educator who was looking for a definition/description he could use in conversation with a state official who views himself as "anti-constructivist":

All that constructivism states is that people learn by taking new information IN ANY FORM (including reading, hearing, seeing, experiencing, etc.) and do their best to make sense of it by applying their already-existing framework for understanding the world. To the extent that there is some sort of disparity or tension between the existing framework and the new data, the potential for change exists. Possible results are modification of the existing framework in light of the new experience/information; denial of the new experience/information by distorting it to fit the framework as much as possible; ignoring the new information as much as possible, etc., though I think that most of the time there is some of all of these things going on for most people most of the time, particularly when the new data are salient and potentially a cause of cognitive dissonance. 

Typical non-constructivist takes on learning appear to assume that somehow new knowledge is transferred to the passive learner by an outside agency (teacher, text, etc.) and learned (or not) based on something like intelligence, attentiveness, studiousness, etc. But there's no acknowledgement of the most obvious truth inherent in constructivism: the active participation (conscious or otherwise) of the learner in how the new information is perceived and processed.

I think constructivism is so clearly sensible that I'm often aghast at how badly it is distorted by contemporary opponents. They're mostly attacking something that they appear not to understand in the least. They don't like the implication that since learning inherently is an act, and thus is "active" that they're old-school brand of teaching to passive students might "kinda sorta suck." So they bend over backwards to defend "direct instruction" at all costs, failing to note that even that form of instruction doesn't overturn constructivist learning theory. It simply operates in ways that may not align all that well with how kids learn. They argue that OF COURSE direct instruction is best, and then conflate a theory of learning with a theory of instruction. Are the theories actually in conflict? Well, probably, but what these folks are doing is ridiculous. It's like someone who prefers a fast-food diet (or has a vested interest in selling fast food) argues against theories of how the body absorbs and process nutrition, because what they fear is that these ideas can be used against their preferred dietary choices. But those who actually argue against their fast food diet don't have a bizarre theory of how the body absorbs and processes food, merely what is healthier or less healthy. So the "disagreement" isn't about what the fast food advocates say it is.

Any constructivist will agree that a lecture conveys information to a learner, but that what is conveyed almost never is what is said or what is understood (which likely is somewhat different from what is said) by the lecturer. Educational reactionaries don't have a better theory of learning, but they fight constructivism because: a) they don't wish to recognize that they can lecture all they want, but what gets learned by each person varies based on who that person is coming into the lecture and what's going on with him/her during the lecture. (By the way, it should be obvious that engaged learning puts more pressure on the learner to actually think about what's going on than does hearing a lecture, but regardless, no pedagogical method guarantees knowledge transfer: only that, at best, the learner is given a good opportunity to experience and learn from that experience); b) they conflate constructivism with a bunch of things that aren't theories of learning, but rather are tools or methods, and to which they have various political and psychological objections; c) they fear the implications for their own teaching or position of power if the things they imagine constructivism automatically comes with are true (whether or not they're correct in those assumptions; and d) they truly fear the implications of student-centered learning as a force for social and political change.

A reading of Hayes' piece supports my analysis, but it's worth noting that she deigns to go where few, if any, have gone before in trying to suggest not only correlation between the rise of what she mistakenly calls constructivism and an alleged rise in special education students, but also that there is a direct causal relationship. In other words, in Hayes' world, constructivism, a theory of learning, CAUSES more kids to need special education. It's hard to fathom how a theory that simply purports to explain better than other theories how people actually learn could cause people to learn differently from the way they already do learn. Either the theory is effective at explaining learning and making predictions about how people learn, or it does not. If not, evidence needs to be offered to show weakness in and failures of the theory, and if possible a better theory should be offered that lacks those shortcomings and doesn't fall down where the previous theory has been successful.

Of course, Hayes does nothing of the kind. That's because she can't distinguish among constructivist learning theory and a host of books, pedagogical practices, and tools that she conflates with constructivism. She has no alternative theory. She has no evidence that constructivism fails as a theory of learning. All she has is anger about some textbooks, classroom practices, and other teaching issues that are NOT a theory of learning at all, let alone constructivist learning theory.

As for her empty claims that constructivism causes kids to need special education, the illogic of this assertion is truly astounding.

It's impossible to have dialogue with people who criticize something they so clearly are misunderstanding and/or intentionally misconstruing. When I confronted Hayes by e-mail with the issues I've raised here, she repeated refused to address a single substantive point, instead focusing on my "reputation" among like-minded anti-constructivists and my alleged attempts at destroying her. That tactic is, I'm afraid, the best she has to offer in defense of her screed. But people who care to understand what all the negativity regarding constructivism is about need to look past the absurd presentations of it from Hayes and like-minded activists: there is no doubt that there are things they oppose vehemently, and it is worthwhile to interrogate and debate those things. But none of them comprises a theory of learning, and none of them is constructivism of any shape or kind.