Learning as a Constructive Activity

Ten or 15 years ago, it would have been all but inconceivable to subject educators or educational researchers to a talk that purported to deal with a theory of knowledge. Educators were concerned with getting knowledge into the heads of their students, and educational researchers were concerned with finding better ways of doing it. There was, then, little if any uncertainty as to what the knowledge was that students should acquire, and there was no doubt at all that, in one way or another, knowledge could be transferred from a teacher to a student. The only question was, which might be the best way to implement that transfer— and educational researchers with their criterion-referenced tests and their sophisticated statistical methods were going to provide the definitive answer.