Constructivism: Defense or a Continual Critical Appraisal – A Response to Gil-Pérez et al.

Authors

• Mansoor Niaz, Universidad de Oriente, VenezuelaFollow
• Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Alicia Benarroch, Universidad de Granada, Spain
• Liberato Cardellini, Università Degli Studi di Ancona, Italy
• Carlos E. Laburu, Universidade Estadual de Londrina, Brazil
• Nicolás Marín, Universidad de Almería, Spain
• Luis A. Montes, Escuela Técnica de Pesca de Cumaná, Venezuela
• Robert Nola, University of Auckland, New Zealand
• Yuri Orlik, Universidad Javeriana, Colombia
• Lawrence C. Scharmann, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
• Chin-Chung Tsai, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
• Georgios Tsaparlis, University of Ioannina, Greece

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2003

Citation

Published as Science & Education 12 (2003), pp 787–797.

Comments

Copyright© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Used by permission.

Abstract

Abstract. This commentary is a critical appraisal of Gil-Pérez et al.’s (2002) conceptualization of constructivism. It is argued that the following aspects of their presentation are problematic: (a) Although the role of controversy is recognized, the authors implicitly subscribe to a Kuhnian perspective of ‘normal’ science; (b) Authors fail to recognize the importance of von Glasersfeld’s contribution to the understanding of constructivism in science education; (c) The fact that it is not possible to implement a constructivist pedagogy without a constructivist epistemology has been ignored; and (d) Failure to recognize that the metaphor of the ‘student as a developing scientist’ facilitates teaching strategies as students are confronted with alternative/rival/conflicting ideas. Finally, we have shown that constructivism in science education is going through a process of continual critical appraisals.