What is Cognitive Constructivism?

The Cognitive Constructivist theory is based mainly on Piaget’s research work and with more contributions of followers such as Bruner, Ausubel, and von Glasersfeld (Liu and Matthews, 2005: 387). This theory claims that learning takes place, not by indoctrination and rote memory, but when students construct and reconstruct meaning for themselves (Ozer, 2004; Attard, Di Lorio, Geven & Santa, 2010: 9). The teacher should organise learning experiences that encourage students to construct knowledge for themselves, when necessary adjusting or rejecting their prior beliefs and misconceptions in light of the evidence provided by the experiences (Prince and Felder 2006: 4). Here the students are responsible and active participants to their learning. They work individually and with others for deep understanding of the given content areas.

Students are the focus of constructivist learning theory. As a result, students’ autonomy and initiative play very important roles, in addition to teacher’s support in the teaching environment (Prince and Felder (2006: 4). As part of this role, students could be given chance to evaluate themselves of the learning progress in the teaching and learning process using self-assessment, which is in line with the learning theories of Piaget and Vygotsky (Esfandiari and Myford, 2013: 113).

To implement this model of teaching in the actual classroom practice, Biggs (1996: 349) state that teachers need to provide types of learning activities relevant to the subjects they teach, tolerate students' errors and see them as signs of current level of understanding, and recognize that substantive learning comes over a long period with the help of group interaction. They are also encouraged to use student-centred approach and authentic assessment (Biggs, 1996:361). The students’ role shift from passively receiving information from the teacher to constructing meaning actively based on the given learning activities (Liu, 2015: 43).

The types of teaching and learning activities that the teacher uses are very important in implementing the desired lesson objectives since they determine the level and type of students' learning. As Biggs (1996: 354) present, teachers are advised to bring teacher- controlled, peer-controlled, and self-controlled learning activities in a constructivist class so that students could benefit a lot from the instruction. The students also have to be well aware of learning strategies and the teachers also should feel responsible to train students as a preparation for learning so that they can help themselves in the long run (Biggs 1996:355).

From the above explanation it is possible to see that the instructional process goes in a more user friendly manner. That is to say the learning activities presented are in line with the previous learning experience of students so that it is easy for them to relate the past experience with the new to understand and achieve the given tasks. The instructional process is more of cooperation than competition. The students help each other to attain the learning objectives.

Prince and Felder (2006:1) state that the motivation students hold highly affects their commitment and efforts they expend towards their learning. Students are likely to engage in contents and learning experiences when the tasks and contents are authentic (real world) problems, challenging, related with their interest, culture, gender, social life, etc. Generally, when they see the importance of their learning, they are determined to work hard and be responsible learners. This idea supports the way constructivism defines learning.

All new learning involves transfer of information based on previous learning (Prince and Felder, 2006). This means that students relate the new information to their previous knowledge. Here, they could change, reshape, or create new deep understanding, may be removing misconception. This is done when students expend a lot of time and energy working actively involving all their sense organs on the content and learning experience with others and individually. The contents, learning experiences, tasks and activities should be organised using constructivism principles suggested by theoreticians such as Lev Vygotsky.

By contrast, the traditional way of the teaching and learning process (lecture-based and rote learning) does not challenge students to work in such a way to create deep understanding. As a result, students focus on memorising some factual information, but they do not have reasoning. The meaning-making activities of constructivist research are similar with the sociological theories of sense-making, which have primarily been applied to teachers. Schmidt and Datnow (2005:950) refer to symbolic interactionists such as Blumer (1969) to describe how “human beings act towards things on the basis of the meanings they have constructed for them”. Schmidt and Datnow (2005: 950) go on to state that “meanings are modified through an interpretive process used by the people involved in those encounters. Sometimes meanings are contested, or they are affected by power relationships in a given interaction”. Prior knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and experiences are important components in the differentiated interpretations of policy.

Spillane, Resier, and Reimer (2002: 389) have created a three-stage framework for understanding sense making. These include a) individual cognition (including prior knowledge, beliefs, experiences and emotion), b) situated cognition (where multiple dimensions of a context or situation play a key role), and c) the role of representations or policy stimuli. In short, policies do not maintain uniformity on the road to implementation.

In relation to teaching writing skills in language classrooms, the Cognitivists’ approach is applied since they see writing as “a thinking and problem solving activity” (Dueraman, 2012: 257; Richards, 1995: 108). As a result, researchers have developed a model of the process of writing and have conducted many studies. For instance, Flower and Hayes (1997) have studied how writers approach tasks in the process model of writing (Dueraman, 2012: 257).In this activity, students are given authentic problems to think critically and solve the problems. Then, after they gather ideas, they are expected to draft their composition. Students are actively involved to attempt their tasks. However, the cognitive approach was criticised for its focus on individual thinking and neglecting the social elements of language learning. The following social constructivist approach is added to explain “when” and “how” the studied concepts should be used in a social setting (Dueraman, 2012: 258).