Interactive Constructivism in Education

Interactive constructivism and its implications for education will be introduced in four steps. (1) The context of the approach and its relation to other constructivist developments will be discussed. (2) I will examine essential pragmatic criteria in the tradition of John Dewey that are relevant for interactive constructivism. (3) More decisively than Dewey interactive constructivism launches a meta-theoretical distinction between observers, participants, and agents. (4) Communication as a chief dimension of education can be analyzed out of three perspectives: the symbolic, the imaginative, and the real. Educators must recognize that their interaction with learners includes great demands not only in practical application/ implementation but also in theoretical reflection. Contexts of Interactive Constructivism The German school and university system is strongly content based. The fixation and standardization of subject matter (Bildung) has been at the center of German discussions on education and schooling from the nineteenth century on. Traditionally in Germany this focus on the contents of learning has been accompanied with an underestimation of the import of communication and lived relationships (cf. Reich 2006). A tripartite school system was established to represent the necessary contents in different classes of students for different occupations after school. For the elites this has been the Gymnasium, for the more technical occupations the Realschule, and for the lower class of workers of all kinds the Volksschule, which is now called Hauptschule. For those who drop out of the regular school system, a Sonderschule was established and has today even become a regular part of the selection model. In times of the economical upswing after the Second World War, the content-oriented school policy was functional in that it helped to give clear orientation for the distribution of different graduates with different skills for different occupations. Social integration was mainly guaranteed by tradition and a general conservatism. The German labor market seemed to confirm the success of the model. But in the last decades the transition into the more global markets with higher levels of lifelong learning on one side and a high level of unemployment on the other, with more needs for communicative and social competences,