Annotationen:Questions and Answers about Radical Constructivism

Narrativ2
The questions I try to answer in the pages that follow were raised after talks I gave at the NARST Meeting in Atlanta (April 1990) and at an AAAS Symposium in Washington (February 1991). Given the limitation of time at both occasions, I could deal only with a small selection. Reviewing the whole collection at a later date, I found that it could be roughly divided into three subject areas and this is how I have arranged them here. I begin with the specifically epistemological ones, then take those that concern the problem of social interaction, and end with some implications the constructivist orientation might have for teachers and the philosophy of instruction. Since the answers I give are not derived from an established dogma but spring from my subjective point of view, the reader will find a certain amount of overlap between the three sections. I like to claim that this is inevitable because, in my experience, once one shifts to the constructivist orientation, everything one thinks and does changes in a way that seems remarkably similar and coherent. But let me emphasize a point I have made in many of my papers: Constructivism, as far as I am concerned, is one possible way of thinking. It is a model—and models, no matter how useful they might prove, must never be claimed to be “true.”