About 10 years ago, I left my career as an engineer and went back to college to earn a license to teach physical sciences at the high school level. My professors were all “constructivists” in exactly the confusing way that Scerri describes. I remember being taught that all knowledge is constructed and that therefore there are really no “right answers” and that we should approach teaching with these ideas in mind. I think my professors meant well, and intended for us to apply what Scerri calls “educational constructivism”, the idea that students move through their misconceptions by constructing a view of mature science. However, in their efforts to get us to adopt what I now recognize as some pretty good educational philosophy, they lumped “objectivism” together with traditional “telling is teaching” instructional methodologies and vilified them both.

For most of my classmates, I think this posed no particular problem, but I had read some philosophy and I understood what constructivism really meant to a philosopher. Also, since I was an older, “non-traditional” student, I had experience that caused me to reject out of hand the notion that all the physical laws I had relied on as a successful engineer were nothing more than an agreement between scientists. I also chuckled as my professors went on to teach us how to design “constructivist” lessons that, when successful, led all the student groups toward the same “objective” conclusion about the little piece of nature they were investigating. As a result, I developed the habit of categorically tuning out or missing out on a lot of valuable educational experience and theory that others had to share, a mistake I only began to rectify after my teaching career had been underway and I learned from my students and colleagues what constructing knowledge means for a learner, as opposed to a philosopher.

Literature Cited

1. Scerri, Eric J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 468-477.

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