A brief exploration of the different understandings of the terms 'constructivism' and 'constructionism'.

1. Constructivism
Constructionism
Confusion
Sherrie Lee
Postgraduate Global Connections
5 August 2015
University of Waikato, Faculty of Education

2. The same?
Textbook definition:
“Constructionism (also referred to as constructivism) is an
ontological position that asserts that social phenomenon and
their meanings are continually being accomplished by social
actors. It implies that social phenomena and categories are
not only produced through social interaction but they are in a
constant state of revision.” (Bryman, 2012)
How do we understand Constructivism and Constructionism?

3. Versions of constructivist philosophy (Schwandt, 1994, 2007)
Constructivists believe that “knowledge and truth are created, not discovered by
mind. They emphasize the pluralistic and plastic character of reality—pluralistic in
the sense that reality is expressible in a variety of symbol and language systems;
plastic in the sense that reality is stretched and shaped to fit purposeful acts of
intentional human agents” (Schwandt, 1994, p. 236)
Radical constructivism (von Glaserfeld, 1989, 1991): “knowledge is not a particular
kind of product (i.e., a representation) that exists independent of the knower, but
an activity or process” (Schwandt, 1994, p. 239)
Social constructionism: “the terms by which the world is understood are social
artifacts, products of historically situated interchanges among people”(Gergen,
1985, p. 267, cited in Schwandt, 1994, p. 240)
How do we understand Constructivism and Constructionism?

4. Individual versus social (Crotty, 1998; Young & Collins, 2004)
“Constructivism proposes each individual mentally constructs the world of
experience through cognitive processes.” / Radical, moderate, social
constructivists (Young & Collin, 2004, p. 375)
“Generally put, social constructionism contends that knowledge is
sustained by social processes and that knowledge and social action go
together. It is less interested, or not at all interested, in the cognitive
processes that accompany knowledge.” (Young & Collin, 2004, p. 376)
How do we understand Constructivism and Constructionism?

5. How do we understand Constructivism and Constructionism?
Constructivism: epistemology focused exclusively on ‘the meaning-making
activity of the individual mind’
Constructionism: focus includes ‘the collective generation [and transmission]
of meaning’
“Constructivism … points up the unique experience of each of us. It suggests
that each one’s way of making sense of the world is as valid and worthy of
respect as any others, thereby tending to scotch any hint of a critical spirit.
On the other hand, social constructionism emphasises the hold our culture
has on us; it shapes the way in which we see things (event the way in which
we feel things!) and gives us a quite definite view of the world”
(Crotty, 1998, p. 58)

6. Constructivism
Radical constructivists (von Glaserfeld, 1995) interpret that it
is the individual mind that constructs reality.
Moderate constructivists (Kelly, 1955; Piaget, 1969)
acknowledge that individual constructions take place within a
systematic relationship to the external world.
Social constructivists (Bruner, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978)
recognize that influences on individual construction are
derived from and preceded by social relationships.
(Young & Collin, 2004, p. 375-376)

7. Constructionism
Constructionism is the view that “all knowledge, and therefore
all meaningful reality as such, is contingent upon human
practices, being constructed in and out of interaction between
human beings and their world, and developed and transmitted
within an essentially social context” (Crotty, 1998, p. 42)

8. Constructionism
Weak social constructionism
• not everything is a social construct
• focuses on how our experience of some particular object or idea is
socially constructed
• does not deny reality in the ordinary commonplace sense of that term
• E.g. writing a social history of the notion of mental illness reveals how it
is culturally produced, uncovers its ideology, and still maintains that it is
real
(Schwandt, 2007, p. 40)

9. Constructionism
Strong social constructionism
• denies any ontology of the real whatsoever
• everything in the world and about the world is nothing but a
sociolinguistic product of historically situated interactions (“linguistic or
semantic idealism”)
• radical perspectivalism: “our experience, thought, and speech about
reality and/or reality itself are a function of the particular conceptual
scheme or framework (e.g., culture, form of life, language game,
paradigm) in which we live and that different conceptual schemes yield
incommensurable understandings of experience and reality”
(Schwandt, 2007, p. 40)

10. References
Bryman, A. (2012). Social research methods (4th ed.). New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research. London, United Kingdom:
Sage.
Schwandt, T. A. (1994). Constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human inquiry.
In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research:
Theories and issues (pp. 221–259). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Schwandt, T. A. (2007). The Sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry (3rd ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Young, R. A., & Collin, A. (2004). Introduction: Constructivism and social
constructionism in the career field. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 64(3), 373–
388. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2003.12.005