What is "constructivism"

1924, in reference to an abstract artistic movement begun in Russia c.1920, from Russian konstruktivizm. Related: Constructivist (1928).

n. 1 (context arts English) A Russian movement in modern art characterized by the creation of nonrepresentational geometric objects using industrial materials. 2 (context mathematics English) A philosophy that asserts the need to construct a mathematical object to prove it exists. 3 (context philosophy psychology English) A psychological epistemology which argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from their experiences.

n. an abstractionist artistic movement in Russia after World War I; industrial materials were used to construct nonrepresentational objects

In the philosophy of mathematics, constructivism asserts that it is necessary to find (or "construct") a mathematical object to prove that it exists. When one assumes that an object does not exist and derives a contradiction from that assumption, one still has not found the object and therefore not proved its existence, according to constructivism. This viewpoint involves a verificational interpretation of the existence quantifier, which is at odds with its classical interpretation.

There are many forms of constructivism. These include the program of intuitionism founded by Brouwer, the finitism of Hilbert and Bernays, the constructive recursive mathematics of Shanin and Markov, and Bishop's program of constructive analysis. Constructivism also includes the study of constructive set theories such as IZF and the study of topos theory.

Constructivism is often identified with intuitionism, although intuitionism is only one constructivist program. Intuitionism maintains that the foundations of mathematics lie in the individual mathematician's intuition, thereby making mathematics into an intrinsically subjective activity. Other forms of constructivism are not based on this viewpoint of intuition, and are compatible with an objective viewpoint on mathematics.

Constructivism may refer to:

• Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes
• Constructivism (international relations), a theory that stresses the socially constructed character of international relations
• Constructivism (philosophy of education), a theory about the nature of learning that focuses on how humans make meaning from their experiences
  • Constructivist teaching methods, based on constructivist learning theory
• Constructivism (mathematics), a philosophical view that asserts the necessity of constructing a mathematical object to prove that it exists
• Constructivism (psychological school), a psychological approach that assumes that human knowledge is active and constructive
• Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s
• Constructivist epistemology, a philosophy maintaining that science consists of mental constructs created as the result of measuring the natural world
• Social constructivism, a theory that human development is socially situated and knowledge is constructed through interaction with others

Constructivism is a philosophical viewpoint about the nature of knowing. Specifically, it represents an epistemological stance. There are many "flavors" of constructivism, but one prominent theorist known for his constructivist views is Jean Piaget, who focused on how humans make meaning in relation to the interaction between their experiences and their ideas. He considered himself to be a genetic epistemologist, which means he considered this interaction in relation to how humans are set up by their genetic make up to develop intellectually. His views tended to focus on human development in relation to what is occurring with an individual as opposed to development that is influenced by other humans. Views that are more focused on human development in the context of the social world are also of many flavors and include the sociocultural or socio-historical perspective of Lev Vygotsky and the situated cognition perspectives of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger; Brown, Collins and Duguid; Newman, Griffin and Cole, and Barbara Rogoff. The concept of constructivism has influenced a number of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, education and the history of science. During its infancy, constructivism examined the interaction between human experiences and their reflexes or behavior-patterns. Jean Piaget called these systems of knowledge schemes. These are not to be confused with "schema," a term that comes from schema theory, which is from information-processing perspectives on human cognition. Whereas Piaget's schemes are content-free, schemata (the plural of schema) are concepts; for example, most humans have a schema for "grandmother" or "egg" or "magnet." Constructivism does not refer to a specific pedagogy, although it is often confused with constructionism, an educational theory developed by Seymour Papert, inspired by constructivist and experiential learning ideas of Piaget. Piaget's theory of constructivist learning has had wide ranging impact on learning theories and teaching methods in education and is an underlying theme of many education reform movements. Research support for constructivist teaching techniques has been mixed, with some research supporting these techniques and other research contradicting those results.

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1913 by Vladimir Tatlin. This was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. He wanted 'to construct' art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th century, influencing major trends such as the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements. Its influence was pervasive, with major effects upon architecture, graphic design, industrial design, theatre, film, dance, fashion and to some extent music.

In the discipline of international relations, constructivism is the claim that significant aspects of international relations are historically and socially constructed, rather than inevitable consequences of human nature or other essential characteristics of world politics.

In psychology, constructivism refers to many schools of thought that, though extraordinarily different in their techniques (applied in fields such as education and psychotherapy), are all connected by a common critique of previous standard approaches, and by shared assumptions about the active constructive nature of human knowledge. In particular, the critique is aimed at the "associationist" postulate of empiricism, "by which the mind is conceived as a passive system that gathers its contents from its environment and, through the act of knowing, produces a copy of the order of reality."

In contrast, "constructivism is an epistemological premise grounded on the assertion that, in the act of knowing, it is the human mind that actively gives meaning and order to that reality to which it is responding". The constructivist psychologies theorize about and investigate how human beings create systems for meaningfully understanding their worlds and experiences.

In psychotherapy, for example, this approach could translate into a therapist asking questions that confront a client's worldview in an effort to expand his or her meaning-making habits. The assumption here is that clients encounter problems not because they have a mental disease but in large part because of the way they frame their problems, or the way people make sense of events that occur in their life.