Complete information about thousands of teaching materials for K-12 math and science. Thousands of web sites for educators and students. Support for long-term classroom planning and professional development. These are a few of the questions that we have begun to ask ourselves and our teaching colleagues. One way to make sense of how students learn is through constructivism.
Constructivism is a word used frequently by science educators lately.
It is used increasingly as a theoretical rationale for research and teaching. Many current reform efforts also are associated with the notion of constructivism. Constructivism is an epistemology, a theory of knowledge used to explain how we know what we know. We believe that a constructivist epistemology is useful to teachers if used as a referent that is, as a way to make sense of what they see, think, and do. The epistemology that is dominant in most educational settings today is similar to objectivism.