Constructivism in Education

Patrick W. Thompson Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education and Department of Mathematical Sciences San Diego State University

Constructivism, as a philosophical orientation, has only been widely accepted in mathematics and science education since the early 1980s. As it became more broadly accepted, it also became clear that there were incongruous images of it. In 1984, von Glasersfeld introduced a distinction, echoed in Steier's chapter 5, between what he called naive constructivism and radical constructivism. At the risk of oversimplification, suffice it to say that naive constructivism is the acceptance that learners construct their own knowledge, whereas radical constructivism is the acceptance that naive constructivism applies to everyone--researchers and philosophers included. von Glasersfeld's distinction had a pejorative ring to it, and rightly so. Unreflective acceptance of naive constructivism easily became dogmatic ideology, which had, and continues to have, many unwanted consequences.¹ On the other hand, I attempt to make a case that, to do research, we must spend a good part of our time acting as naive constructivists, even when operating within a radical constructivist

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