CONSTRUCTIVISM

Constructivism is basically a theory based on observation and scientific study about how people learn. It says that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. When we come across something new, we have to resolve it with our previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge. Constructivism is a learning theory found in psychology.

There are few guiding principles:-

1.     Learning is an active process in which the learner uses sensory idea and builds meaning out of it.

2.      People learn to learn as they learn: learning consists both of constructing meaning and constructing systems of meaning.

3.     Learning involves language: the language we use influences learning.

4.     One needs knowledge to learn: it is not possible to assimilate new knowledge without having some structure developed from previous knowledge to build on.

Constructivism is the idea that learning doesn’t just happen by traditional methods of teachers standing in front of the class and lecturing. Constructivism is a belief about what "knowing" is and how one "come to know." Constructivists believe in individual interpretations of the reality, i.e. the knower and the known are interactive and inseparable. Constructivism states that learning is an active, contextualized process of constructing knowledge rather than acquiring it. Knowledge is constructed based on personal experiences and hypotheses of the environment. Learners continuously test these hypotheses through social negotiation. Each person has a different interpretation and construction of knowledge process.