So I am going to finally move this blog into the public sphere and showcase it as one worthy of reading bcause of the fine writng it contains.
I thought I will start by putting my essay on Bruner and constructivism in here, now that it's been corrected and I got an A for it. So here goes. Heavy, but worth reading:
Deconstructing Brunerian Constructivism
Intro: The Concept Of Significance
A major development in the twentieth century for the student of theory was the evolution of a few defining terms that were seen to be highly utilitarian in their ability to refer to many of the humanities and arts disciplines simultaneously, making multiple interfaces possible. These terms are the sign, signifier, signified, signification, referent and the text - in their fullest connotations. Readers of learning theories may notice that these important terms did not leave much of an impact on the discourse of Education. My effort in this essay will not be to ask why, but to connect these theoretical terms to learning theory and my practice, finally generalizing on the output. The obvious fear that comes to the surface, whenever theories that stem from Saussurean linguistics, structuralism, post-modernism, deconstruction and political empowerment are discussed in connection with learning, is the one about whether these are anarchic and subversive and will undermine the foundations of what child-centered education is supposed to be. Deconstructionists would laugh at the idea that education is supposed, a priori, to be this or that. It is true that polyphonic discourses deconstruct commonly held assumptions. But to believe that they are automatically against learning theories like Constructivism, which is the theory I want to examine, is misleading. Au contraire, to rigorously test the philosophical concepts that underpin a system, an institution or a philosophy is to do it a great benefit.
So, to frame my present effort, through which I hope to temporarily discover my philosophy or theory of learning, let me start by asking a few questions that seem relevant. To rephrase things in terms I am familiar with as a theorist, what will be my main signifier and what will it signify? What will be its referent? What is the text and what are the subtexts? My temporary answers, simply put, are: The learner – whether in singular or plural - is the signifier under consideration. No learner, no education. The signified, consequently, is learning. The referent of the process of signification which is naught but the process of learning is - a surprisingly DesCartesian finding - the interaction and interface between the learning self and the world from which it partially learns. The text, or education, is naturally the sum of these four parts. This self-sufficient and significant system has been, contaminated, at least for me, by three subtexts which area. the ideology of powerb, the theories of learning andc. the need, due to financial, political, social and economic constructs, for ‘entrepreneurial’ middlemen between the learners and actual learning.This impasse has to be faced now because it is a reality. My attempt will be to deconstruct the subtexts after discussing some of the salient principles outlined in Bruner's version of Constructivism, of which he is only one of the proponents.
Constructivism And Bruner. This essay is constructivist in shape. That derives partly from choice and partly from the fact that the course which is eliciting it is also, to some extent, deliberately or unconsciously, constructivist. Concurrently, the metaphoric framework I have evolved is both constructivist and deconstructive in that my key words and concepts are typical signifiers that slide in and out of one another and overlap in phallogocentric jouissance that is a reflection of the amorphousness of words and the indeterminacy of concepts that resist, ideally, fixity. Constructivism, based primarily on what Piaget stressed, the concept of cognitive structures – i.e. ; schemas - , is a wide theory of learning that comprises several perspectives and includes thinkers as diverse as J. Bruner and the neo-Marxist Vygotsky. Bruner's contribution can be summed up in the following points.1. The signifier or the learner should be the active agent in the give and take of the signified; learning.2. In the process of signification or learning the learner is not a finished referent-product, but has a sign on him that reads 'under construction,' like a good website.3. He learns not only to construct ideas and hypotheses but also to make decisions based on models that have a cognitive structure embedded in them. He thereby arrives at meaning, and patterns experience towards a definite qualitative end result and, in a sense, constructs himself with help from the world (environment) as referent.4. He learns extrapolation and transcending of subject boundaries, both typical outcomes of constructivist endeavors.5. Facilitation has to bring about the learner’s ability to recognize first principles on his own initiative.6. It must lead to a profitable exchange of views (the Socratic dialogue and method of learning).7. The top-down approach of ‘delivering’ knowledge and information has to be jettisoned for simplification, taking into consideration age and level- appropriateness.8. The building blocks or spiral method is to be followed so that by the end of the project the learner can build the entire ‘project’ by himself.9. The facilitator has to motivate structure and sequence learning, besides planning the interval and ratio of interventions that negotiate the minefield of reward and punishment.10. The historical, social and cultural aspects of the signifier have to be taken into consideration to inculcate in him the "readiness" to learn.11. The learner needs order and organization so that spiral learning will take place, whereby the learner has the skill to build on what has been previously constructed.12. Facilitation leads to the ability and potential of the signifier to learn being maximized to the extent where inferences that go beyond the mastered level lead to facility with abstractions, filling in of gaps, and decoding and remixing of all the relevant aspects of textuality. Bruner doesn't take Skinner’s concept of reinforcement into consideration and seems to place little emphasis on the learner's past, emotions or physiological needs. These can be considered flaws; not just in his theory but in constructivism in general. It is too psychological in its orientation and seems to deal only with the mind, brain, intellectual prowess and mental processes, to the detriment of other aspects of the learner and learning, unlike in the more holistic approach of Gardner. However, I remain drawn to Bruner's theory, because I am more mind- oriented than heart or body-centered.
Constructivism as a theory of learning and its postulates like Brunerism have already proved themselves quite application-friendly in U.S. and Europe and the degree of difficulty experienced by educators in trying to implement them is moderate. The Indian context requires that it be tweaked for our circumstances. It is a user friendly theory because it deals primarily with patterning the process of learning into cognitive structures for best results and thus, in its crux, is aiming at the essential. Its implementation becomes difficult only if complicated by aiming too high.
Illustrating The TheoryComing to current practice, I would like to illustrate, using the above twelve-point explanation I have given of Bruner’s form of Constructivism, several things that I have done that parallel almost exactly his theoretical viewpoints.
To ensure that the signifier in one particular learning situation I was in last year was involved in active give and take I made them engage in activities like
a. listening to “novel readings” by two accomplished readers,
b. participating in a video-viewing exercise (the film of the novel) followed by discussion and
c attempted movie-making of one section; along with the usual activities of
d. reading and
e. writing.
The results were, I admit, mixed. But the active give and take definitely occurred.
By the end of the year, exposed to the idea of reading a by-any- standards ‘long’ novel, the group of twenty-one I have taken as the case for presentation exemplified clearly the truth that in the effort to construct and situate themselves as mature readers they varied widely in terms of achievement. While six of them actually read the entire book, which was task- fulfillment at its best, two of them read the lengthy allotted portion. The other thirteen coped by reading some of the more relevant sections of the text, listening to five chapters being read out to them, having it reinforced for them visually through watching the movie and by trying to make a section of it as a film, using auditory aid in the form of literary readings and lastly by making use of a study guide available on the net. The results of the exams showed that those who had constructed themselves as mature readers scored the highest, the ones who had done the required work came second and the others lagged behind in spite of the active give and take of the sessions. The reason for this is obvious. While all these signifiers are ‘houses’ under construction, the ones who read the entire text by themselves were the ones who participated most in the process of signification, with least intervention from the outside, and hence they were able to collect and assemble the most number of building blocks for the project. They have almost reached the target of becoming the signified in whom learning has taken place. They were deeply engaged in the process of signification – or of making sense of the text for themselves, to put it in a more germane fashion.
This was seen in their writing that is gradually developing, - reflecting not only their growth in the discipline but also personal growth – suggesting that they are beginning to imbibe not just content but the pattern of the cognitive structure embedded in the efficacious practice of learning that the theory of constructivism is when applied. They have not yet gone on to extrapolation and beyond the textual paradigms, but recognition of first principles is beginning to take place. For instance, now the group under observation has begun to understand the generalities that go into the make-up of a good novel like story, plot, setting, themes and characters and next year, by the end of the present module in its totality, they will also be able to recognize the specificities and peculiarities of a novel’s tonality that makes it stand out in literary terms due to elements like aptness of dialogue, the pictorial quality, characterization, depth in treatment of themes etc. Gradually, the constructivist approach has begun to yield profitable exchanges of views and dialogues that are definitely Socratic in nature. My approach has taken age and level- appropriateness too much into consideration. As a result of pitching the standard too low and trying to transfer concepts and knowledge in too simple a fashion to meet even the supposedly lowest common denominator, instead of delivering learning from top-down, not as much ground was gained as might have otherwise been possible. In the attempt to motivate the group as facilitator, I was able to bring the power of collaboration into play by arranging for two fine readings of sections of the novel, especially one by an expert in the field that took into consideration things like the exact accent of the local dialect that was spoken by some of the characters in the novel. The content was divided into structured units for ingestion and the ratio and interval of interventions was planned appropriately with the stress being on reward and reinforcement – an element borrowed from Skinner – rather than punishment. This bred its own kind of chaos and slackness in the group but the philosophy was not sacrificed for a year. What was most interesting was the process of whole class reviews held in camera, so to speak, to gauge the measure of group and individual learning that had actually taken place. It was an innovative venture that the group had never gone through before and led to a lot of discussion and proactive results, especially in the updating of notebooks by some of the members. An interesting facet that emerged was that gender seemed to play a part in receptivity to constructivist techniques of facilitation. Hopefully in one more year, if this whole method is fine-tuned, the group which now shows much improvement in that nineteen of them seem to have become more focused, may eventually come to a stage where all twenty-one show enough acumen to go beyond the texts and prescribed syllabus to a place where making hypotheses, spiral development and maximizing of learning potential - leading to self-improvement which is the constructivist aim - all become possible.
Conclusion: Deconstructing Constructivism As A Means To PowerSeveral issues swam into focus in my attempt, of a very specific nature; therefore not addressed by constructivism directly. If the three or four areas that needed to be addressed urgently were reading, writing, student variability and lack of know-how regarding researching and thinking skills; perhaps it was because Bruner’s suggestion that the historical, social and cultural contexts also need to be taken seriously into consideration to bring about a solution that would actually create “readiness” in the group was ignored. However, to do so would have opened a Pandora’s Box, one which I would love to address next year. The predicament in doing so consists of the following question. What is the price tag on education for rich kids? Is advanced theory applied to learners in select Indian settings a modus operandi of the convoluted machinations of power, whereby the children of the rich get immunity from having to do what their less fortunate counterparts have no choice but to, while being assured that power will remain in their hands because of the superiority of the quality of education they get? Does the effective implementation of theories of learning like Bruner’s indirectly foster and maintain in a country like India a new caste system, more rigid than the old, in its raising up of a class of learners who are elite because of the training they can afford and who learn, beyond cognitive structures, the only lesson valued by the ‘strong’ of the world – how to increase in power and wealth and become rulers; an end for which the means is this kind of specialized learning?
If it is so, it is a case of the ‘constructivist’ text called education being falsely constructed, without recognizing the gaps and discontinuities in the arbitrary and perennially changing relationships between the signifier, the signified, the referent and the world. The gap becomes fatal if the system does not realize that textuality is closed and kinetic but just outside of it, un-quantified by any theory, there are large human factors that consist of much more than parents, business entrepreneurs, position, fame, assets, high finance, aristocracy, influence and .... expensive education! The ‘much more’ is signified primarily, for the present writer, by elements like the children themselves, elementary and high school teachers, learning support staff and counselors, the work- force that cleans an establishment daily and the non-teaching staff, to name just a few, and many other factors that are not quantified by most of the advanced, learned theories of learning. The factors include respect, equality and a developed awareness that the earth is part of a vast, beautiful, living web of life that always finds amusing the attempts of a few strands in it to consider themselves greater than the sum of the parts. In brief, theories of learning must be supported by a socially viable network like the one Aditi is certainly striving to be, communities of practice that take history and the world into consideration in such a manner that those in the echelons of power like the management and the parents and the facilitators in authority are sensitized to the adverse effects of a system that relies only on intellectual, aesthetic, scientific, technological, economic, bodily- kinetic or academic achievement. At the same time, this shouldn’t result in a loss of motivation in creating achievers in these fields. None of these achievements are essential life skills, if they stand in isolation.
To sum up, theories with constructivist goals seem to me pragmatically sound but not humanizing enough, if its application is only limited to international schools. Education’s general theoretical drift today is similarly constricted by such theories being boxed into narrow strips in vibrant democracies like India. Any theory of learning which ultimately doesn’t send the learner in the direction of truth, and that includes responsibility to all one’s fellow men; is, by inference, incomplete and needs deconstruction so that one may come up with a practice that creates in the signifier the innate drive to ask the age-old question: What is really "significant" enough to learn in the brief life each human being has on earth?
Bibliography attached in an earlier post.
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