John Anderson, Reder, and Herb Simon criticize strong forms of Constructivism, which insist that it’s not possible to reason systematically about the representations in a learner’s head, that understandings must formed by the student without explicit guidance, that learning should happen in authentic, social situations, driven by students’ free choices.
Much of this is repeated from Ericsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (1995). Long-term working memory. Psychological Review, 102(2), 211–245, which itself has quite a lot in common with Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75–86.
One particularly interesting observation:
The alliance between situated learning and radical constructivism is somewhat peculiar, as situated learning emphasizes that knowledge is maintained in the external, social world; constructivism argues that knowledge resides in an individual's internal state, perhaps unknowable to anyone else. However, both schools share the general philosophical position that knowledge cannot be decomposed or decontextualized for purposes of either research or instruction.
Q. Why is it strange that Situated learning and radical Constructivism shohuld be allied?
A. SL claims knowledge only exists in interaction, in the social world; while RC claims that knowledge is an internal state and can’t be interacted with externally.
Q. What key ideas do Situated learning and radical Constructivism share?
A. Knowledge can’t be decomposed or decontextualized for research or instruction.
As in Anderson, J. R., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (1996). Situated Learning and Education. Educational Researcher, 25(4), 5–11, I think JRA et al underrate the importance of motivation. They think of it as a necessary constraint on the thing they care about—knowledge formation. And their sense of what might be good enough is pretty cynical. But while I’m happy to accept cognitivist interpretations of learning mechanically, I’m much more interested in motivation and meaning as central in the learning process. One way to interpret this is: I don’t endorse chocolate-covered broccoli, but I believe these authors do. JRA et al cite a study where it’s not clear if a constructivist-style intervention reflects fundamental cognitive factors or motivation/attention, but they say “these debates are in a certain sense irrelevant.” I don’t think the debate is irrelevant at all, at least for my project.
The article includes comments by K. Anders Ericsson and Robert Glaser.
KAE highlights an important issue for me:
The real challenge for educators is that effective improvement of performance requires active engagement and concentration by students. The challenge is similar in domains of expertise where individuals are drawn to the inherent enjoyment of playful social interactions. In contrast, parents and teachers almost invariably have to actively support the engagement in deliberate practice and show its instrumentality in attaining the desired higher level of performance.
I’m interested in situations where there’s inherent, playful enjoyment. I’m also interested in mastery. So one way to think about my project is in bridging these situations.