Toward Social Constructivism in Preservice Education

As stated in the introduction, we believe social constructivism can provide crucial direction for preservice education and we see evidence of it in the strong, innovative programs described in this book. But what exactly is meant by this term? As Richardson (1997) notes, constructivist teaching is not “a monolithic, agreed-upon concept” (p. 3). It is often barely understood, or actually misunderstood. For example, some identify it just as an activity approach, overlooking its role in empowering learners and critiquing prevailing ideas and social practices. Others understand it as unstructured “discovery learning,” where anything goes. Still others interpret it as a highly subjective and individualistic process that neglects experience of the world and collaboration with others. Misunderstandings of these kinds give constructivism a bad name and create obstacles to gaining support and resources for constructivist teaching and teacher education; they also make implementation of the approach difficult even under ideal conditions. In this chapter, through discussion and examples, we will attempt to clarify the nature of social constructivism, and we will continue to illustrate it throughout the book, especially with reference to preservice programming. In exploring social constructivism, we will draw on past interpretations of constructivism, notably, those of Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky, and also bring insights from more recent writers on sociocultural theory, such as Foucault, Derrida, and Rorty. By its own tenets, social constructivism is constantly changing and open to a variety of interpretations. We will present here our own understanding of the approach; and, in constructivist spirit, we invite readers to develop their interpretation, in part in response to ours. However, we will argue strongly for our interpretation, because we believe much is at stake and some ways of conducting teacher education are better than others. On our understanding, social constructivism is an approach that