The Best Form of Education: Constructivism

In the United States, one of the most polarizing aspects of American society is how American children, the future generation, should be educated. From the conservative education approach of essentialism to the more activism-driven education form of reconstructionism, the debate over the best philosophy for education is one that many have disagreed with. One of those philosophies is constructivism, a form of education “in which students construct new understandings through active engagement with their past and present experiences,” (Koonce 48). The student is in control of what they are learning based on their best interests and constructivism caters to the student based on their own perception of reality and development as an intellectual and that “knowledge or truth is subjective and relative to the individual,” (Carson). This student-centered philosophy seems like an ideal form of education and can be argued as the best philosophy of education to some because of its theme of freedom in an educational setting and how it produces “deeper levels of understanding,”; however, many argue that this form of education is difficult to implement, “imprecise, overly permissive, and lacking in rigor,” compared to a more traditional form of education known as objectivism (Koonce 48). After reading the articles in the Koonce text and recollecting my experiences in school before going to university, I firmly believe that constructivism is not the best educational philosophy.

Like any other form of education philosophy, constructivism can be argued as the best form of education. In the Koonce text, both sides of the argument are presented through writings by Child Development Professor David Elkind, a proponent of constructivism, and Education Professor Jamin Carson, an opponent of constructivism. Although Professor Elkind supports constructivism in which he states that “children are not containers to be filled up to a certain amount” after each chapter of their educational journey, he does recognize that it does have roadblocks to be a feasible form of teaching (Elkind). He believes those roadblocks, or “failures of readiness” are failures of “teacher readiness, curricular readiness and societal readiness,” (Elkind). Elkind targets the lack of proper teacher training, which he believes that teachers need to be experts on both their curricular and instructional skills. He believes that a curriculum that takes into consideration the mental ability and development of children should play a role in the timing of when and how certain material should be taught. He also believes that society is not prepared for a major shift in education because there is no “energized social consensus,” into changing general education (Elkind). Elkind believes that constructivism would be ready to implement into education once these failures have been fixed, but Jamin Carson, an objectivist believes that the reason why constructivism is difficult to adopt into education is not just because of lack of readiness Elkind states, but because the principles of constructivism are flawed. Regarding Elkind’s failures of readiness, Carson states that teacher readiness is contradictory because teachers cannot ready their students without an agenda of what knowledge they “would like [their] students to acquire”, which is not constructivism (Carson). He states that any curricular decision is objective because it is up to the teacher to formulate the curriculum. He also states that there is a desire in society to reform education to close the gap between socioeconomic groups, but constructivism is not a philosophy that can aid that (Carson). These arguments Carson made to counter Elkind’s reasoning on why constructivism is not yet implemented addresses both the flaws of constructivism principles and how impractical this philosophy could be. He also believes that allowing students to believe that “there are no right-or-wrong answers” on how to interpret information creates “careless and uncritical…thinkers,” (Carson). Although both Elkind and Carson agree that students should have freedom in their education, Elkind supports an educational philosophy that is student-centered while Carson supports an educational philosophy that gives students the freedom to learn, but what they are learning must conform to an objective reality and is monitored by the teacher.

My position on constructivism as an educational philosophy is that it sounds ideal, but it is difficult to agree with it. Although I acknowledge that there is a bias for me to view objectivism as a more ideal form of education since I have experienced that form of education, I would pick the former if given the choice to pick between objectivism and constructivism. Active engagement is by no means bad, it is preferred; however, there needs to be an agreed consensus on which interpretation best represents a given concept. In my APUSH class junior year of high school, my teacher dedicated for students to reenact trench warfare in World War I. This active engagement was fun and helped the class learn a lot about the topic, but at the end of the day, the class had to agree that trench warfare was not easy, and there was not too much room to have a different interpretation of trench warfare. Having multiple viewpoints on reality in an educational setting is inefficient. According to Elkind, if education is true to teach people how to deal with others, having different views on reality will make problem-solving very difficult between those who are arguing because both believe and are told to believe that they are right based on their perception of reality. If education is meant to understand a concept, then constructivism principles are difficult to use because if “30 different students…arrive at 30 different understandings…of a concept, all of which are not equally appropriate” there is not really a point of teaching that concept to a classroom because it will be difficult to accommodate all the students and allow them to reflect on their interpretation of the concept without someone else’s input (Abdal-Haqq). In an experiment with elementary sixth graders that divided them into two groups: one being taught with a constructivist approach, the other a traditional approach, it was shown that although constructivist teaching can improve academic achievement in students, “it is not effective in terms of student self-concept enhancement and student learning strategies in general,” (Kim). Although higher achievement may be positive, this counters the point of constructivism, which is aimed to develop a deeper understanding of the material that a student is learning. One of the biggest challenges of constructivism is that it is difficult to “translate a learning theory into a theory of teaching” and this “raises questions about what teachers need to know and be able to do,” which is difficult if the educational philosophy is student-centered in which the student is free to interpret information whatever way they want, as long as they learn from it (Abdal-Haqq). Because of this, teachers are learning too when they are teaching or would have to prepare a response for anything that a child interprets. It would be much simpler and more practical if, as Carson states, if “one possesses prior knowledge that informs new knowledge…[which] makes new knowledge meaningful” and if that prior knowledge is incorrect “a person will be forced to update [they are] old knowledge,” (Carson). In conclusion, my position over constructivism in education is that I like how it emphasizes the desire for students to have a deeper understanding of what they are learning, but in the end, it seems too unclear and infeasible.

Because of the polarizing nature of education, the debate on whether constructivism will be the best form of education or not will last a long time. This debate will impact future generations of students because this educational philosophy is very liberal, and today where more millennials and younger generations are becoming more liberal, an educational system that encourages educational freedom and promotes deeper understanding may be more appealing to younger audiences and may influence them to push forward this type of philosophy to more educational institutions. However, they must think about the principles of constructivism and how they could be put into practice, as it is a philosophy that seems to contradict itself. In the end, if constructivism is not implemented in the United States’ education system, what schools are experiencing right now will be the norm; however, if students do manage to make constructivism an accepted form of education, there will always be other educational philosophies, like objectivism, to try to discredit it.