Constructivism in science education

Constructivism has been considered as a dominant paradigm, or research programme, in the field of science education. The term constructivism is widely used in many fields, and not always with quite the same intention. This entry offers an account of how constructivism is most commonly understood in science education.

Science Education is now an established field within Education, and worldwide has its own journals, conferences, university departments and so forth. Although a diverse field, a major influence on its development was research considered to be undertaken from a constructivist perspective on learning, and supporting approaches to teaching that themselves became labelled constructivist. Thus, this constructivism was largely of a psychological flavour, often drawing on the work of Jean Piaget,David Ausubel,Robert M. Gagné and Jerome Bruner. One influential group of science education researchers were also heavily influenced by George Kelly (psychologist)'s Personal Construct Theory. The work of Lev Vygotsky (since being championed in the West by Jerome Bruner) has also been increasingly influential.

These workers from psychology informed the first generation of science education researchers. Active research groups developed in centres like the University of Waikato (Aotearoa/New Zealand), University of Leeds (UK) and University of Surrey (UK), with a strong interest in students' ideas in science (formed before, or during instruction) as these were recognised as being highly influential on future learning, and so whether canonical scientific would be learnt. This work, sometimes labelled the 'alternative conceptions movement' was motivated by a series of influential publications on children's ideas in science and their implications for learning (and so for how teaching should be planned to take them into account). Whilst a range of influential papers could be cited it has been suggested that a number of seminar contributions in effect set out the commitments, or 'hard core' of a constructivist research programme into the learning and teaching of science. The perspective was also the focus of a number of books aimed at the science education community - researchers and teachers.

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