Constructivist vs. Positivist

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge and tries to define what knowledge really means.

Within Epistemology there are two methods, constructivist and positivist.  The constructivist method says that knowledge is being able to make sense of and process the information that they receive.  Much of this method has to do with the individual student and his or her past experiences and how they affect the students ability to process facts.  Teachers that use this method of teaching will be more likely to give an essay exam rather then a multiple-choice exam like a positivist teacher may do.  The positivist method says that knowledge is just the factual and verifiable information.  This method does not depend on the student processing of information, for it is more dependent upon the student being able to regurgitate the information in a factual way.

I tend to identify more with the constructivist epistemology.  My main reason for this is that I believe more in depth learning will be achieved using this method over the posivist method.  One of the main points from the article that stated this for me was on page 48, "The positivist teacher says a student "knows" a Frost poem when the student knows what expert critics say it means; the constructivist teacher says a student "knows" a Frost poem when he can make sense of it for himself."  The other reason that I identify with the constructivists is because it is the way that I learn things best.  With the positivist method the learning seems to only go to the learning level of understanding, but with the consstructivist method it seems as though the student will have to more often take themselves to the learning level of correlation in order to be able to attain the knowledge.

I learn best with the kinesthetic modality.  I have always been able to learn things in the classroom through readings and lectures through the auditory and visual modalities, however I tend to learn much easier and more memorably when I can learn things in a more hands on approach.  One point that I took out of this article that will be of great use in teaching is that it does not matter whether the student is taught in the modality that best works for him/her, what matters that most is that the content being taught is being taught in the content's best modality.  Another thing that I took from the article is that memories are stored in terms of their meaning, not their modality.  So if I want something to stick with a student for a long time then I should assign some personal meaning to it for the student.