Abstract
This paper argues that constructivist science education works with an unsatisfactory account of knowledge which affects both its account of the nature of science and of science education. The paper begins with a brief survey of realism and anti-realism in science and the varieties of constructivism that can be found. In the second section the important conception of knowledge and teaching that Plato develops in the Meno is contrasted with constructivism. The section ends with an account of the contribution that Vico (as understood by constructivists), Kant and Piaget have made to constructivist doctrines. Section three is devoted to a critique of the theory of knowledge and the anti-realism of von Glasersfeld. The final section considers the connection, or lack of it, between the constructivist view of science and knowledge and the teaching of science.
Two or three times in this author’s arguments I have noticed that in order to prove that matters stand in such-and-such a way, he makes use of the remark that in just this way do they accommodate themselves to our comprehension, and that otherwise we should have no knowledge of this or that detail; or that the criterion of philosophizing would be ruined: as if nature first made the brain of man. and then arranged everything to conform to the capacity of his intellect. But I should think rather that nature first made things in her own way, and then made human reason skillful enough to be able to understand, but only by hard work, some part of her secrets. Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Stillman Drake trans., University of Calfornia Press, pp. 264–5.
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Nola, R. (1998). Constructivism in Science and Science Education: A Philosophical Critique. In: Matthews, M.R. (eds) Constructivism in Science Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5032-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5032-3_3
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