Constructive Learning -- An Integrated Exploration in Learning Science

Author: Zhang Jianwei Sun Yanqing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: The new century arrives quietly with a series of new terms: information society, knowledge economy, digital age, learning society, globalization, sustainable development. While these concepts inspire us with boundless hope, they also pose a common question to us: Is education ready? Educational reform, a heavy topic on the international stage! In the field of teaching, the innovation of concepts and the development of technology have become two interdependent driving forces in the process of educational reform. The new learning and teaching paradigms centered around constructivism serve as an important ideological foundation for the new learning paradigm. This new concept, combined with computer-based information technology, is currently shaping new practical models of learning and teaching. This book attempts to explore the transformation of the learning paradigm in the new era by standing at the intersection of ideas and technology. We broadly refer to the new learning paradigm as "constructivist learning." As you read this book, you may find it somewhat "unconventional": readers from educational psychology, educational technology, and teaching theory may feel it relates to their fields, yet it doesn’t fully belong to any one of them. If this is the effect, we will be gratified, as this is exactly what we aimed for: an integrated perspective combining knowledge and methods from multiple disciplines—learning science—to comprehensively examine human learning and its facilitation. Of course, this is an ambitious and challenging task, and we deeply feel the limitations of our knowledge and expertise. This book is merely a step toward this goal. It is one of the outcomes of the National Education Science "Fifteen-Year Plan" Youth Special Project (EMB010888). The book is divided into two parts: Theoretical Exploration and Practical Integration. In the Introduction, the first part summarizes the vision and approach of learning science and analyzes the basic direction of learning transformation in the information age.
Chapter 1 synthesizes recent research findings from various branches of psychology, revealing the rich experiential world and immense potential of learners, prompting us to re-examine our views on learning. Chapter 2 concisely summarizes the basic ideas, main branches, and epistemological foundations of the constructivist learning view, summarizing three central shifts in the learning paradigm: the active construction of learning, social interaction, and contextualism. However, since Chapter 2 only provides a summary of the essence of constructivism, it does not fully reflect its depth, as its more profound ideas are distributed throughout the chapters. Chapter 3 re-examines the role of knowledge in teaching, analyzes the assimilation and accommodation processes of knowledge construction, and focuses on "learning for understanding" and conceptual change. Chapter 4 provides a general analysis of influential constructivist learning models and teaching approaches, elaborating on problem-based learning and knowledge-building communities. Constructivism is a new epistemology and learning view, but we can clearly see the echoes of early ideas such as "learning by doing" and "discovery learning." Therefore, Chapter 5 attempts to place constructivism within the context of the development of teaching thought over the past century: from Dewey’s "learning by doing" to constructivism, treating "learning by doing" as an enduring inquiry-based learning approach. It summarizes the two prototypes of "learning by doing" and their developmental trajectories and explains "learning by doing" from the perspective of relevant learning theories. Chapters 6 and 7 comprehensively analyze two aspects of the micro-mechanisms of "learning by doing": knowledge construction based on problem-solving and scientific inquiry and discovery learning.
In the Practical Integration section of the second part, Chapter 8 first summarizes the core activity structure and characteristics of constructivist learning and proposes an approach that is easily integrated into the classroom: problem-based teaching. Under the new paradigms of constructivism and others, we need to re-evaluate the primary role of information technology in learning and teaching. Chapters 9 and 10 discuss two important issues: how to use technology to promote higher-order thinking and how to use technology to facilitate constructivist interaction. Chapter 11 proposes an ecological-integrated learning model for the integration of information technology in teaching and discusses the design of online collaborative inquiry learning. The final chapter focuses on teacher professional development, analyzing teachers’ conceptual shifts and educational technology training, but both aspects are concerned with improving teachers’ actual classroom performance (performance). It seeks to shift from a knowledge-transfer-oriented training approach to emphasizing teachers’ deep beliefs and their performance support at the organizational cultural level for teaching innovation.
This book was co-authored by the two of us. The Introduction and Chapters 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12 were primarily written by Zhang Jianwei, while Chapters 3 and 10 were primarily written by Sun Yanqing, but all chapters reflect the contributions of both authors. It is a blessing and a cherished to walk alongside each other in life and academia, adding a warm light to our studies and research. As we complete this manuscript, we sincerely thank our mentor, Professor Chen Qi (Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning Institute, Beijing Normal University), for her years of guidance, teaching, and care. She was one of the first in China to systematically review and research constructivist learning theory, guiding her disciples to conduct in-depth theoretical and experimental research on related learning psychology and technology issues. Her doctoral and master’s theses focused on multimedia self-regulated learning, problem-based learning in online environments, concept mapping and multimedia learning, cooperative learning, computer-simulated scientific discovery learning, and real-world mathematical problem-solving learning. Moreover, Professor Chen Qi has always advocated for a dialectical approach to constructivism and the various contradictions in teaching. This book embodies many of her important ideas and related work.
We also sincerely thank our mentors, Professor Zhang Houcan (Psychology Department, Beijing Normal University) and Professor Dong Qi (Psychology Department, Beijing Normal University), for their years of cultivation, intellectual inspiration, and support in both academic and personal life. Additionally, during the writing of this book, the series editor, Professor Li Jiahou, provided valuable suggestions on the positioning and framework of this book and offered encouragement and guidance throughout the process. Professors Martene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT) at the University of Toronto provided many important materials, and their knowledge construction theory deeply inspired us. Our classmate and friend Dr. Yang Xudong offered insightful insights during many exchanges. Here, we express our sincere gratitude to them.
Finally, we thank our little daughter, Chong, for bringing us happiness and inspiration, and our parents for their selfless love! The publication of this book itself underwent a typical process of knowledge construction: around the issue of learning paradigm transformation, which has long concerned us, we synthesized many valuable literatures (with citations noted as much as possible), conducted theoretical and experimental research, and engaged in practical explorations with many frontline teachers. During this process, our ideas underwent continuous refinement, and to this day, we still find some of our understandings and perspectives unsatisfactory, with a host of questions lingering in our minds. Now, we present these ideas as public knowledge objects of our community, hoping that they can be continuously improved through critique and interaction within the community and that they may give rise to new questions. We look forward to the criticism and corrections from our peers.