In Dialogue: Social Constructionism and Radical Constructivism

Abstract

These approaches have a number of in common, (a) For a start, rather than focus on things and substances, studies should focus on activities; not just on any activities in general, however, but on creative, formative, or constructive activities of a self-reproductive, self-sustaining, or reflexive kind, (b) In the growth of knowledge, making is more important than finding, and creative processes are more important than processes of discovery, (c) We also take it for granted that it no longer makes sense to talk of our knowledge of an absolute reality-of our knowledge of a world independent of us-because for us there is no external world, as it used to be called, (d) Indeed, if we can have any contacts at all with any thing or activity beyond or outside of the constructionist or constructivist activities-contacts or resistances that might surprise us, then their character remains unknown to us, except in relation to the activities from within which all our knowing takes place (Harre, 1990; Shorter, 1984,1993). (e) Thus, given our interest in what goes on within one or another kind of constructive activity, although most of us still claim to be concerned with theory or theories instead of trying to test them in terms of their degree of correspondence to a supposed external world-appealing in the process to truth as accuracy of representation-as problematic,9 and von Glasersfeld is wrong to see the issue as hinging simply on of failure. As Wittgenstein (1953) pointed out, there are countless ways that our concepts might be linked to our surroundings. Thus, we do face a problem in explaining how we might those links, and why some, but not other, ways of talking are effective for us in doing this. It is not just a matter of some conceptions that are viable within a student's experiential world-to use von Glasersfeld's terms-failing when confronted by counterexamples presented by the good teacher. As Gergen points out, matters of authority are at stake here also. That is, by what authority do the examples in question count as counterexamples? In this connection, von Glasersfeld's invocation of Mandelbrot's (1982) theory of fractals-to show that what we call the coastline of a country is utterly indeterminate and is therefore something we [as individuals] construct (my emphasis and additions)—seems to undermine , rather than strengthen, his claim for the primacy of individual experiential worlds over socially constructed ones. It is in terms of points of physical contact that no determinate outcome is possible; measuring a coastline is clearly a social practice, and is no doubt open to argumentative debate. For students at least (but clearly for mature scientists as well), respect for, if not struggles with, socially established authorities are everywhere a part of doing science, Galileo being a case in point.