Response to kim

Could the scientific method still be viable for the constructivist?

I can see why you ask that question. The constructivist relies on subjective experiences to make up their own world and the point of the scientific method is to study things objectively. The scientific method is a way to accurately measure something while cancelling out specific nuisance variables. You have an independent variable, a dependent variable and controls. Yet, one can carry out an objective study and then view it subjectively. The scientific method is important so that those pre-subjective thoughts or predictions do not get in the way of how the results turn out. The article we read a few weeks ago about radical constructivism, argued that radical constructivism should be used in physics classrooms. Physics highly relies on the scientific method to carry out experiments. Just like everyone else, radical constructivists want to discover knowledge and they know that when doing an experiment they cannot let their projections get in their way. The scientific method is viable for the constructivist.

Question: Do radical constructivists face obstacles in daily life that force them to go against their beliefs?

Phenomenology

In class on Wednesday we brought up the idea of social constructivism. I became interested in seeking out another type of philosophy of reality and came across the idea of Phenomenology. It was founded by Edward Husserl (yet he adopted terms and ideas from Kant and Hegel's philosophies.) Phenomenology looks into the conscious experiences of individuals. These experiences include: emotion, imagination, desire, memory, thoughts and most importantly perception.

Phenomenological philosophy terms

1. Lifeworld: the world of lived experience from a person.

2. Intentionality: Consciousness is always conscious of something, that something being whatever a person is focusing on. This can be mental or physical stimuli. Intentionality looks at the aim of consciousness.

3. Evidence: The subjective gathering of truth

4. Noesis and Noema: Noesis is the actual thought and noema is the ideal thought in any act of intentional consciousness.

5. Empathy and intersubjectivity: the phenomenological concept of empathy refers to concentrating on the “subjectivity” of oneself and then applying that to experiencing another’s human body as yours. Intersubjectivity represents objectivity. One must view themselves as a subject among other subjects. At the same time, they must see themselves as existing for the other person.

Phenomenology as an applied pedogological practice allows teachers to discover new meaning in the aspects they teach and allows them to make choices that change personal teaching practices.

In a school reform study sixteen teachers participated in the process of coming up with a shared school pedagogy. This involves teachers sharing their successful experiences with teaching methods so that they may collectively come up with joint pedagogical beliefs. Teachers also shared their personal stories with teaching and this gave other teachers insight to how others perceive things. After these joint beliefs were established they attempted to incorporate them into their everyday teaching.

They used phenomenology as a methodology in addition to these new practices. This implied exploring the knowledge of children: how they perceive, what they think about, and how they view the world. After this incorporation, some, but not all of the teachers felt like they had more insight to the students which helped them teach better. (http://www.aare.edu.au/02pap/mos02453.htm)

Question: How would teachers benefit from understanding how their students perceive, imagine, think, and structure their conscious?

What is Knowledge?

The radical constructivist's two main claims are as follows: Knowledge is not received but actively built up by an individual. Mental processes change and work to adjust the experiential world, not to realize ontological reality.

Ontological reality contains what 'really exists', it is a question of metaphysics. The way that radical constructivist theory protects itself from being called solipsistic is by remaining agnostic to any metaphysical claims. Solipsism is based off of Descartes claim: I think therefore I am. (I can only know I exist). Solipsism is philosophical suicide because it is ridiculous to think that you only exist and everything else may very well be a figment of your imagination.

Radical constructivist theory stresses the importance of perception, how an individual perceives reality to be. Reality does not exist independently of its perceivers. Knowledge is not knowledge until someone perceives it as that way. There is no raw knowledge only interpretations of it. This is why in radical constructivist teaching, the teacher must make a cognitive map of how their student interprets information, because they must understand their reality.

In class on Wednesday, Professor Johnson talked about the theories of radical constructivism and realists. He stated that knowledge = justified/ truth/ belief. Our knowledge consists of what we believe is justified and true. For realists, when a new belief matches an already existing belief, the new belief is true. Yet, for the radical constructivist when a new belief matches a previously existing belief, the new belief is viable, not true.

Questions: Are justification, truth, and belief necessary or sufficient conditions for knowledge? Since radical constructivist theory does not believe something can be true, does that mean that they do not have valid knowledge? Can the information in their repertoire only be 2/3 knowledge?