Disciplined Judgment: Toward a Reasonably Constrained Constructivism

Abstract

Teachers wishing to apply constructivist theories to P-12 pedagogy must skillfully move between student knowledge constructions and powerful disciplinary knowledge and discourses. Although the gulf between these two ways of knowing varies markedly by discipline, constructivist methods are often taught as if they can be applied uniformly across all subjects. This paper provides a critique of overly-simplified applications of constructivism in P-12 pre-service programs by illustrating the way constructivist methods are constrained to differing degrees in the classrooms of three disciplines: literacy, history and mathematics. Building on recent arguments for the need to foreground disciplinary differences in P-12 instruction, the authors draw on published accounts of teaching from the scholarly literature to discuss ways in which pedagogy and discipline interact in praxis. By citing published classroom accounts across three subject areas, the authors illustrate differences in the ways judgment may play out across the disciplines and suggest a framework for future exploration of their method.

Notes

01. Much hinges on whether students' constructed ideas can be thought of as “true” or merely “worthy.” We have quibbled about what to call constructed ideas that seem to “work.” Perhaps Dewey's idea of warranted assertability is the best we can do here, as to Dewey, truth was too high a threshold. Warranted assertability refers to the idea that a belief has been tested and can be confidently acted upon (Dewey, 1938).

02. Another potential problem of constructivism is that it (both as a learning theory and as it plays out pedagogically) does tend to be a largely middle class and White phenomenon. There are notable exceptions to this. It's reasonable to see Freirian educational work as constructivist and some recent applications of his work (e.g., Gutstein, 2006) apply this praxis to students of color. That said, we were unable to find descriptions of classroom interactions that were set in explicitly diverse classrooms and that met our needs to further the conversation regarding the fixidity/pliability of knowledge frames and the role of the teacher and students as judges of students' constructed ideas.

03. The epistemological differences across our disciplines, and the resulting variations in knowledge frames, are a cause of much of the tension inherent in this article. In our efforts to understand each other's enthusiasm and queasiness about the role of judgment in constructivist pedagogy, the authors often became ensnared in arguments about where epistemology leaves off and pedagogy begins.