A Constructivist Critique of the Assumptions of Instructional Design

Any analysis of constructivism is difficult because there is a great range of ideas and a great variety of theoretical positions whose proponents call “constructivist”. The idea that is common to all these flavors of constructivism is that students construct knowledge for themselves. The divergence of opinion among constructivists arises from differences in perception of the instructional implications of this basic tenet. For some, knowledge construction requires little more than the addition of coaching or help systems to traditional instructional strategies. For others who take a more radical position, knowledge construction implies that each of us knows the world in a different way, that there is therefore no shared objective world to teach about, and that consequently instructional analysis and prescription make no difference to what and how students learn. I must also point out that there is great diversity in the opinions and theoretical stances of instructional designers. These range from hard-core behaviorism to a cognitive orientation which, adopting the same tenet of knowledge construction, coincides with the position of “moderate” constructivists, as Merrill (1991) has pointed out. Only at their extremes are the positions of constructivists and instructional designers truly adversarial.

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