Semantically rich domains require operative knowledge to solve complex problems in real-world settings. These domains provide an ideal environment for developing authentic constructivist e-learning environments. In this paper we present a framework and a methodology for developing authentic learning environments for such domains. The framework is based on an ecological view and characterizes di...

A decade after the ‘‘Sokal Hoax,’’ Alan Sokal and Paul Boghossian still claim that postmodern arguments are incoherent attacks on reason and truth. However, both also continue to mischaracterize ‘‘constructivist’’ epistemology, to engage in highly problematic logical gymnastics to defend their own views, and to ignore changes in philosophy of science and science studies since 1996. I offer a br...

It has been argued that technology will promote the use of constructivist approaches to teaching and learning advocated by the current reform movement. Yet computer technology, in and of itself, does not embody a single pedagogical orientation. Di!erent types of software can be used to address di!erent educational goals. This article examines relationships between teachers' instructional perspe...

Texts aimed at construction research students at all levels describe the organisation and undertaking of research work. These generally include a descriptive discussion of the works of such philosophers as Aristotle, Kant and Popper and relate this to theory building, theoretical frameworks, paradigms, etc. Reference is made to hypotheticodeductive methods, action research and grounded theory t...

In the case of events such as fundamental regulatory reforms or radical technological advances, firms have to undertake discontinuous or dynamic learning. Such learning involves the generation of new capacity through the acquisition of new knowledge and the combination of it with the firm’s existing accumulated knowledge. In developing countries the challenge for firms to develop new competenci...

Schema learning is a way to discover probabilistic, constructivist, predictive action models (schemas) from experience. It includes methods for finding and using hidden state to make predictions more accurate. We extend the original schema mechanism [1] to handle arbitrary discrete-valued sensors, improve the original learning criteria to handle POMDP domains, and better maintain hidden state b...

Science education reforms in Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, and the United States promote a constructivist pedagogy of science leading to a contemporary view of science literacy. The reform documents provide somewhat fuzzy descriptions of critical philosophical, epistemological and pedagogical dimensions and underlying assumptions and relationships. An adequate conception of the desir...

Over a period of several decades spanning the origin of the Vienna Circle, Schlick repeatedly attacked Husserl’s phenomenological method for its reliance on the ability to intuitively grasp or see essences. Aside from its significance for phenomenologists, the attack illuminates significant and little-explored tensions in the history of analytic philosophy as well. For after coming under the in...

Operational epistemology is, to a first approximation, the attempt to provide cognitive rules such that one is in principle always in a position to know whether one is complying with them. In Knowledge and its Limits, I argue that the only such rules are trivial ones. In this paper, I generalize the argument in several ways to more thoroughly probabilistic settings, in order to show that it doe...