In this paradigm, learning emphasizes the process and not the product. How one arrives at a particular answer, and not the retrieval of an 'objectively true solution', is what is important. Learning is a process of constructing meaningful representations, of making sense of one's experiential world. In this process, students' errors are seen in a positive light and as a means of gaining insight into how they are organizing their experiential world. This perspective is consistent with the constructivist tendency to privilege multiple truths, representations, perspectives and realities.
Multiplicity is an overriding concept for constructivism.
It defines, not only the epistemological and theoretical perspective but, as well, the many ways in which the theory itself can be articulated. Researchers and theorists have developed variants of constructivism or have evolved the theory in different directions. Nonetheless, there are many common themes in the literature on constructivism which permit the derivation of principles, instructional models and general characteristics. The following section outlines how a constructivist epistemology and theory of learning may be expressed as or translated into a wide variety of specific characteristics or principles of constructivist learning and teaching. This site was created by Elizabeth Murphy , Summer, 1997.