Cognitive constructivists emphasize accurate mental constructions of reality. Radical constructivists emphasize the construction of a coherent experiential reality. Social constructivists emphasize the construction of an agreed-upon, socially constructed reality. Is there room for common pedagogy?

Constructivist pedagogy, the link between theory and practice, suffers from the breadth of its theoretical underpinnings. Many theorists and practitioners have generated constructivist pedagogies with an array of results. While these pedagogies share a set of core design principles, the peripheral principles tend to vary greatly. The general theoretical and practical constructivist consensus, however, across all three types of constructivism, indicates that eight factors are essential in constructivist pedagogy. It should be noted, though, before the discussion of these principles begins, that these principles are not solely constructivist in nature. Indeed, all of these principles have been proposed by other theories/theorists in other times. What makes this list "constructivist" is the assemblage of these specific principles and the basis/rationale for their inclusion.

1. Learning should take place in authentic and real-world environments.
2. Learning should involve social negotiation and mediation.
3. Content and skills should be made relevant to the learner.
4. Content and skills should be understood within the framework of the learner's prior knowledge.
5. Students should be assessed formatively, serving to inform future learning experiences.
6. Students should be encouraged to become self-regulatory, self-mediated, and self-aware.
7. Teachers serve primarily as guides and facilitators of learning, not instructors.
8. Teachers should provide for and encourage multiple perspectives and representations of content.

1. Learning should take place in authentic and real-world environments. Whether building accurate representations of reality, consensual meanings in social activities, or personally coherent models of reality, experience is paramount. Experience, both socially oriented and object oriented, is a primary catalyst of knowledge construction. Experience provides the activity upon which the mind operates. In addition, knowledge construction is enhanced when the experience is authentic. For the cognitive constructivist, authentic experiences are essential so that the individual can construct an accurate representation of the "real" world, not a contrived world. For the social and radical constructivists, authentic experiences are important so that the individual may construct mental structures that are viable in meaningful situations.
   
   
2. Learning should involve social negotiation and mediation. While only social constructivism emphasizes social interaction as a basis for knowledge construction, cognitive and radical constructivisms do assign social interaction a role. Social interaction provides for the development of socially relevant skills and knowledge, as well as providing a mechanism for perturbations that may require individual adaptation. In some cases, such as cultural mores and culturally arbitrary rituals (e.g., greetings, gender relations, dress), knowledge can only be attained through social contact. In addition, as an individual gains experience in a social situation, this experience may verify an individual's knowledge structures or it may contradict those structures. If there is contradiction or confusion, then the individual must accommodate this contradiction in order to maintain either an accurate model of reality or a coherent personal or social model of reality. Finally, an integral component of social mediation is the use of language. Language is the medium through which knowledge and understanding are constructed in social situations.
   
   
3. Content and skills should be made relevant to the learner. All three types of constructivism emphasize the concept that knowledge serves an adaptive function. If knowledge is to enhance one's adaptation and functioning, then the knowledge attained (i.e., content and skills) must be relevant to the individual's current situation, understanding, and goal. This relevancy is likely to lead to an increase in motivation, as the individual comes to understand the need for certain knowledge. Ultimately, experience with relevant tasks will provide the individual with the mental processes, social information, and personal experiences necessary for enhanced functioning within one's practical environment.
   
   
4. Content and skills should be understood within the framework of the learner's prior knowledge. All learning begins within an individual's prior knowledge, regardless of constructivist affiliation. Understanding a student's behavior requires an understanding of the student's mental structures, that is, an understanding of the student's understanding. When a student replies that the answer to 54 - 38 is 24, the teacher must not think "Oh, that is wrong," but rather "What is the student's understanding of subtraction that has led to this answer?" In this case, the student appears to be using the following rule of subtraction, "subtract the smallest from the largest." While this rule is "incorrect" given our current system of mathematics, it is, none-the-less, the rule the student is using. Understanding the student's rule usage makes it much easier for the teacher to demonstrate, using manipulatives of some type, the non-viability of the student's understanding (i.e., have the student count out 54 blocks, then take away 38 blocks from that pile, and finally count the remaining 16). Only by attempting to understand a student's prior knowledge will the teacher be able to create effective experiences, resulting in maximal learning.
   
   
5. Students should be assessed formatively, serving to inform future learning experiences. Cognitive, social, and radical constructivism all assert that the acquisition of knowledge and understanding is an ongoing process that is heavily influenced by a student's prior knowledge. Unfortunately, knowledge and understanding are not directly visible, but rather must be inferred from action. Thus, to take into account an individual's current level of understanding in this ongoing teaching and learning process, a teacher must continually assess the individual's knowledge. This formative assessment is necessary to accurately create the next series of experiences and activities for students.
   
   
6. Students should be encouraged to become self-regulatory, self-mediated, and self-aware. The underlying tenet of constructivism, and the main thread that holds together this array of theoretical positions, is the claim that learners are active in their construction of knowledge and meaning. This activity involves mental manipulation and self-organization of experience, and requires that students regulate their own cognitive functions, mediate new meanings from existing knowledge, and form an awareness of current knowledge structures. Within a cognitive constructivist perspective, self-regulation, self-mediation, and self-awareness would be subsumed under the construct of metacognition. Metacognition is considered an essential aspect of learning and consists of (1) knowledge of cognition (i.e., knowing what one knows, knowing what one is capable of doing, and knowing what to do and when to do it) and (2) regulation of cognition (i.e., the on-going task of planning, monitoring, and evaluating one's own learning and cognition). While cognitive constructivism would emphasize self-regulation and self-awareness, social and radical constructivism would emphasize self-mediation. Self-mediation is represented within social and radical constructivism by Vygotsky's (1978) concept of the psychological tool, and Piaget's (1977) concept of reflective abstraction, respectively. Vygotsky (1978) believed that students construct mental signs, or psychological tools, to represent concepts and relationships, and that these tools are used to mediate "intermental" cognition. Similarly, Piaget (1977) theorized that students mentally reflect on the use and nature of objects and then construct new knowledge by generalizing, or abstracting, new relationships. The importance of the thought and self-regulation relationship was expressed by Vygotsky (1978), "The system of signs restructures the whole psychological process and enables the child to master her movement" (p. 35).
   
   
7. Teachers serve primarily as guides and facilitators of learning, not instructors. The role of the teacher in the learning process has often been a major factor in the apparent division between cognitive constructivism and social/radical constructivism. Teachers, in the cognitive constructivist perspective, are usually portrayed as instructors who "transmit knowledge." The teacher instructs, while the learner learns. In actuality, in the cognitive constructivist perspective, the role of the teacher is to create experiences in which the students will participate that will lead to appropriate processing and knowledge acquisition. Consequently, cognitive constructivism supports the teacher as a guide or facilitator to the extent that the teacher is guiding or facilitating relevant processing. Contrarily, since social and radical constructivism eschew any direct knowledge of reality, there is no factual knowledge to transmit and the only role for the teacher is to guide students to an awareness of their experiences and socially agreed-upon meanings. This teacher as guide metaphor indicates that the teacher is to motivate, provide examples, discuss, facilitate, support, and challenge, but not to attempt to act as a knowledge conduit.
   
   
8. Teachers should provide for and encourage multiple perspectives and representations of content. The relationship of multiple perspectives and multiple representations is one of cause and effect within cognitive constructivism. Experiencing multiple perspectives of a particular event provides the student with the raw materials necessary to develop multiple representations. These multiple representations provide students with various routes from which to retrieve knowledge and the ability to develop more complex schemas relevant to the experience. In addition, in social and radical constructivism there is no privileged "truth," only perceptual understandings that may prove to be more or less viable. This being the case, a student's understanding and adaptability is increased when he or she is able to examine an experience from multiple perspectives. These perspectives provide the student with a greater opportunity to develop a more viable model of their experiences and social interactions.
   
   

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