★ Must-know
📌 Cognitive constructivism emphasizes how individuals build understanding, whereas social constructivism emphasizes learning through interaction and participation in culturally meaningful activities.
📌 An external source view treats knowledge as a representation of the outside world, an internal source view treats it as transformation of prior knowledge, and a combined view treats it as construction through social interaction and experience.
Further detail
In the external-source view, knowledge is accurate to the extent that it reflects the outside world, and direct teaching, feedback, and explanation support learning.
In the internal-source view, learners transform, organize, and reorganize prior knowledge, so exploration and discovery are more important than direct teaching and the teacher serves as a guide. - Piaget
In the combined external-and-internal view, culture, language, beliefs, and interaction filter knowledge of the outside world, and guided discovery combines teaching, modeling, and social interaction. - Vygotsky
Information-processing theories are constructivist in that they explain how individuals construct internal representations such as propositions, images, concepts, and schemas.
Cognitive construction centers on the individual; social construction centers on interaction and culture.
★ Must-know
Constructivist learners actively build and revise mental models to interpret experience, then test their understandings against experience and other people’s understandings.
Five recommended learning conditions are (Driscoll, 2005):
Further detail
🔄 Novices progress through apprenticeship by:
Situated learning views knowledge as the community’s accumulated practices, identities, and tools, and learning as becoming more able to participate in those practices and use those tools.
Constructivist learning goals include:
Student ownership means direct involvement and agency in learning, while teachers retain responsibility for instruction and honor the knowledge students bring to school. - Vossoughi et al., 2021
Reading and calculation skills can transfer to completing income taxes even though tax forms were not part of the learner’s high school curriculum.
Collaborative argumentation asks students to establish and defend reasoned positions, respect others’ positions, weigh evidence, and work together to negotiate meaning.
★ Must-know
📌 Motivational scaffolding sustains engagement, attention, self-efficacy, and emotion management, whereas cognitive scaffolding directly supports students’ understanding and skill development.
Further detail
Motivational scaffolding can (Radford et al., 2015):
In a study of first- through third-grade math instruction, Emily Fyfe and colleagues found that moving from concrete puppet representations to abstract equations improved learning, including for students with greater prior math knowledge. - Emily Fyfe and her colleagues, 2015
Support adjusts, fades, then transfers responsibility.
★ Must-know
📌 Comparative organizers activate relevant existing schemas, whereas expository organizers provide new knowledge needed to understand upcoming material. - Mayer, 1984
📌 Advance organizers can scaffold learning, especially for unfamiliar, complex, or difficult material, if students understand them and they clearly show relationships among upcoming concepts and terms.
Further detail
Advance organizers: direct attention to important upcoming material, highlight relationships among ideas, remind students of relevant prior knowledge
Especially effective organizers include:
📌 Before asking students to reason about principles, arguments, and evidence, teachers should ensure that they have the basic facts and knowledge needed for deep thinking. - Pashler et al., 2007
Comparative organizers retrieve prior knowledge; expository organizers supply new knowledge.
★ Must-know
An inquiry scenario typically presents a puzzling event, question, or problem, after which students form hypotheses, investigate and test them, draw conclusions, and reflect on the problem and their thinking.
Science inquiry activities can be (Furtak and her colleagues, 2012):
📌 Inquiry learning requires teacher guidance and scaffolding; leaving students to conduct experiments entirely on their own is not effective. - Furtak et al., 2012
Further detail
Teachers support inquiry metacognitively by helping students monitor progress, conceptually by supplying topic information, and socially by supporting equitable collaboration. - Dobber et al., 2017
Furtak and colleagues analyzed 37 studies conducted from 1996 to 2006 comparing inquiry approaches with traditional science teaching. - Furtak and her colleagues, 2012
Puzzle → hypotheses → investigation → conclusions → reflection.
★ Must-know
🔄 Problem-based learning typically proceeds through (Hmelo-Silver, 2003): initial problem discussion and identification of learning issues, individual research, group reporting and collaborative solution-building, further research if needed, reflection on acquired knowledge and skills
The teacher in problem-based learning identifies engaging problems and resources, explains objectives, organizes student work, coaches solution development, and supports reflection on learning and process. - Arends & Kilcher, 2010
📌 Research findings on inquiry and problem-based learning are mixed and depend partly on what is learned, the approach used, and how learning outcomes are measured. - Hung et al., 2019
Further detail
📌 Inert knowledge is memorized information that is seldom applied, whereas problem-based learning aims to develop useful, flexible knowledge. - Whitehead, 1929
📌 Project-based learning resembles problem-based learning, but its projects last longer and may involve multiple problems.
Kirschner and colleagues argued that minimally guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instruction emphasizing guidance, especially for students with limited prior knowledge. - Kirschner et al., Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work. An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, 2006
A review of 108 studies found explicit teaching more beneficial than unassisted discovery, and its authors concluded that unassisted discovery generally does not benefit learning. - Alfieri and his colleagues, 2011
Guided inquiry can support learning; unguided discovery can leave learners confused.
★ Must-know
Cindy Hmelo-Silver (2004; Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007) found good evidence that problem-based learning supports flexible knowledge, problem-solving skills, and self-directed learning, but less evidence that it is intrinsically motivating or teaches collaboration.
Optimal inquiry tasks include at least one of: guided tasks with scaffolding, tasks requiring learners to explain their ideas and receive timely feedback to ensure accuracy, tasks providing worked examples of how to succeed
Most cognitive apprenticeship models include expert modeling, coaching or tutoring, conceptual scaffolding that is gradually faded, learner articulation of knowledge, reflection against expert and earlier performance, and exploration of unpracticed applications.
Further detail
Problem-based learning improved science achievement and conceptual development in K–8 science classes (Merritt et al., 2017).
Second-grade students taught with project-based approaches in social studies and literacy gained more than five months of learning compared with peers in traditional formats (Duke et al., 2021).
Inquiry-based materials used by almost 20,000 middle-school students in a large urban district were associated with significantly higher standardized-test passing rates, with African American boys benefiting especially (Geier et al., 2008).
In mathematics problem solving, students with little prior knowledge benefited from feedback while exploring solutions, whereas students with some knowledge benefited more from independent exploration without feedback or guidance (Fyfe et al., 2012).
Rogoff (2016) calls an apprenticeship approach found in indigenous communities “Learning by Observing and Pitching In,” in which family and community learning enables increasing participation and contribution over time.
Community-based internships at Lexington's STEAM Academy pair high-school students with experts in fields such as research, design, recycling, radio production, horse grooming, gardening, architecture, and financial planning, and culminate in public presentations.
Unguided discovery can falter; guided inquiry adds scaffolding, feedback, or worked examples.
Group learning can reinforce misconceptions, conformity, superficial answers, and status inequalities when teachers do not plan and monitor interactions carefully.
McCaslin and Good (1996) identify group-learning risks including prioritizing speed or socializing over learning, shifting dependence to a possibly incorrect group expert, increasing status differences, and student loafing or loss of confidence.
Information-processing theories explain cooperative learning through rehearsal, elaboration, organization, connection-making, and review; Piagetian theory emphasizes cognitive conflict; sociocultural constructivism emphasizes social origins and later internalization of higher mental functions.
Group work describes working together; collaboration is a way of relating and cooperation pursues a shared goal.
★ Must-know
Johnson and Johnson (2009a) define formal cooperative learning as students working together for one class period to several weeks to achieve shared learning goals and complete joint tasks or assignments. - David and Roger Johnson
True cooperative groups rely on (David and Roger Johnson, 2009a):
📌 Ill-structured tasks have multiple answers and unclear procedures and benefit from rich interaction, while tightly structured processes, competition, and rigid roles can inhibit interaction on complex problem-solving tasks.
Further detail
In a randomized study of fifth-graders from 36 classes, collaborative learning about wolf management outperformed direct instruction on recognizing both sides of a dilemma, reasoning, and weighing reasons by importance (Zhang et al., 2016).
Highly structured tasks with specific answers, such as practice, routines, reading questions, and computations, can suit structured techniques such as STAD, in which teams of four compete based on improvement over previous achievement levels. - Slavin, 2017
For social-skills or intergroup-understanding goals, assigning and rotating group roles can support communication and distribute leadership opportunities, while rewards may undermine community and respect.
Routine tasks benefit from structure; complex tasks need richer, more open interaction.
★ Must-know
📌 Teachers should compose heterogeneous groups with attention to students’ personalities, abilities, backgrounds, and special skills, while monitoring whether everyone contributes and learns.
📌 Cooperative-learning roles should serve learning: social-skills groups emphasize listening, encouragement, and respect; practice groups emphasize persistence and participation; complex-learning groups emphasize discussion, explanation, inquiry, brainstorming, and creativity.
Further detail
A meta-analysis of 71 studies found no relationship between cooperative group size and how much students learned during interactive peer activities (Tenenbaum et al., 2020).
A participation rule such as “No person speaks twice until each person has spoken once” can help distribute discussion time.
Groups that include students who are perceived as different or often rejected should include patient, kind, and nonreactive members who will not give them a hard time.
Heterogeneous grouping improved fourth- and fifth-grade reading-comprehension performance over homogeneous ability grouping in one study, although homogeneous grouping may help in some circumstances. - Murphy et al., 2017
Possible group roles include Encourager, Supporter, Gate Keeper, Coach, Question Commander, Checker, Taskmaster, Recorder, Reflector, Quiet Captain, and Materials Manager.
📌 Teachers should teach students how to enact assigned roles and rotate roles equitably so students can participate in different aspects of group learning.
During group reports, audience members can predict and theorize while listening, summarize results, and relate their predictions and theories to the results in a report-out; these listening roles promote class dialogue and conceptual understanding. - Palincsar & Herrenkohl, 2002
Students from different cultural backgrounds may hold different values about communication, leadership, and interpersonal trust in group work, so modeling and clear guidelines can help establish shared expectations. - Inns & Slavin, 2018
Review and rehearsal favor larger groups; discussion and problem solving favor smaller groups.
★ Must-know
In reciprocal questioning, pairs or triads use teacher-provided question stems to create questions about lesson material, then take turns asking and answering them. - King, 1990, 1994, 2002
🔄 Jigsaw II proceeds in this order:
In a four-person structured controversy group, two pairs research and advocate opposing positions, present their cases, discuss using evidence, reverse positions and argue the other side, and then seek consensus in an integrated perspective. - D. W. Johnson and R. Johnson, 2009b
Further detail
Reciprocal questioning requires no special materials or testing procedures and can be used with a wide range of ages. - King, 1990, 1994, 2002
Compared with traditional discussion groups, reciprocal questioning has proved more effective at encouraging deeper thinking and connections between lesson content and prior knowledge or experience. - King, 1990, 1994, 2002
📌 Because Jigsaw can sometimes activate competitive or individualistic tendencies, teachers should emphasize that all members must learn all the material and can assign group members to check one another’s understanding. - Roseth et al., 2019
Research links constructive/structured controversy to:
Teachers using structured controversy should set both academic objectives and social-skills objectives, and may act as devil’s advocate or use questions to deepen critical thinking.
Civil discourse involves:
In Jigsaw, each student carries one piece that the whole group needs.
★ Must-know
📌 For social-skills and team-building goals, guidelines recommend groups of 2 to 5 and common-interest, mixed, or random membership; for structured fact- and skill-based practice, groups of 4 to 6 with mixed-ability composition; and for higher-level conceptual tasks, groups of 2 to 4 selected to encourage interaction.
Further detail
Role assignments should match the goal: monitor participation and conflict and rotate leadership for social skills; monitor engagement and ensure low-status students have resources to offer for structured practice; and support interaction, divergent thinking, extended discourse, or facilitation for higher-level thinking without obstructing learning.
The teacher’s role can be model and encourager for social-skills goals, model, director, or coach for structured practice, and model and facilitator for higher-level conceptual tasks.
Teachers should monitor groups for listening, turn-taking, encouragement, and conflict management in social-skills work; questioning, elaborated explanations, attention, and practice in structured work; and questioning, explanation, probing, divergent thinking, rationales, synthesis, and connected knowledge in higher-level work.
Teachers should begin with simple cooperative methods: one or two skills such as listening and paraphrasing for social goals, paired quizzing for practice, and paired reciprocal questioning with a few stems for conceptual tasks.
When teaching students with learning disabilities new or difficult concepts, cooperative learning may be a poor choice because frustration and social rejection may result from difficulties understanding concepts or maintaining social relations.
Advanced students in mixed-ability cooperative groups may face a pace that is too slow, tasks that are too simple, and excessive repetition, or may end up teaching others or doing the group’s work quickly. - Smith, 2006
📌 Mixed-ability groups can engage advanced students without losing others when teachers use complex tasks that permit work at different levels. - Smith, 2006
★ Must-know
📌 Technology access alone does not automatically increase academic achievement; digital devices and supports can be effective when used well.
Further detail
One-to-one laptop programs are associated with higher achievement in math, English, science, and writing, as well as more student-centered and project-based instruction. - Zheng et al., 2016
Specialized software can support basic word decoding, phonological awareness, number sense, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension by providing individual feedback, an appropriate pace, and motivation.
Crompton and Burke analyzed 186 studies published between 2014 and 2019 on mobile technology and learning in PreK–12 settings, and more than half found that mobile technologies significantly promoted deep learning.
📌 Teachers should prioritize learning outcomes rather than technology when choosing mobile tools, and teachers and learners need to know how to use those tools effectively.
In Betty’s Brain, students learn a science topic well enough to teach it to a computer agent named Betty, check her learning through questions and quizzes, and receive mentoring from an expert agent named Mr. Davis. - O'Donnell, 2006
Personal learning environments may use:
★ Must-know
Pieter Wouters and colleagues analyzed 38 studies of serious educational computer games conducted from 1990 to 2012 and concluded that games outperformed traditional instruction for learning and retention, but not motivation; outcomes improved when games included other instruction, multiple sessions, and group work (Wouters et al., 2013). - Pieter Wouters and his colleagues
Computational thinking includes:
Further detail
A meta-analysis of augmented-reality learning studies found positive effects on student learning (Garzón & Acevedo, 2019), while other research found that IVLEs can increase enjoyment and engagement without always producing learning gains (Makransky et al., 2019, 2020; Mayer, 2019).
Well-designed educational games can engage problem solving, cooperation, communication, and motivation through goal setting, intermittent reinforcement, and interest (Adachi & Willoughby, 2017).
Seymore Papert introduced LOGO programming and turtle graphics for children in 1980, 1991, and 1993.
📌 Educators disagree about whether programming develops logical thinking across subject areas or primarily teaches students to program.
PLEs personalize when and how learning happens; IVLEs immerse learners in simulated real-world tasks.
★ Must-know
📌 When selecting technology for young children, ask whether it is the best tool for the job, whether it adds value, whether the activity benefits the child, and whether the benefits justify the costs (Bullard, 2017).
📌 Software for young children should avoid solitary drill and practice and instead use simple spoken directions and open-ended activities that encourage discovery, exploration, problem solving, cause-and-effect understanding, social interaction, and children's control.
Digital citizenship includes: protecting personal and others' information, respecting intellectual property and proper attribution, guarding against malware and phishing, behaving professionally, evaluating the truthfulness of online information
Critical media questions include: Who made and sponsored the message?, Who is its target audience?, How accurate and credible is its information?, What is left out?
📌 In a flipped classroom, students study lessons independently outside class and use class time for homework, projects, and practice with teacher support; in a traditional classroom, instruction takes place in class and students do homework outside class.
Further detail
📌 Multimedia features should support meaning rather than add distracting effects that increase extraneous cognitive load.
In a study of over one million students in grades 8, 10, and 12 from 1996–2016, Twenge and colleagues observed declining well-being beginning in 2012 alongside increased screen time and reduced participation in non-digital activities (Twenge et al., 2018). - Jean Twenge and her colleagues
One to two hours of daily digital engagement was not harmful to psychosocial functioning in children aged 6 months to 17 years, whereas use exceeding 5 hours per day was associated with problems (Orben & Przybylski, 2019; Przybylski et al., 2020; Orben, 2020).
In a 2014 national survey, 78% of teachers reported flipping at least one lesson and 45% reported flipping once or twice a week (Maloy et al., 2021).
Research reviews found that students in flipped classrooms typically learned more and could learn at their own pace, but students' self-discipline in completing unsupervised instructional materials was a challenge (Birgili et al., 2021; Shi et al., 2020).
Meaningful learning requires scaffolding that supports learners' cognitive, behavioral, and affective engagement both individually and as members of sociocultural groups (Borup et al., 2020).
★ Must-know
Five assumptions guide constructivist learning-environment design:
Advance organizers serve three purposes:
🔄 An inquiry process:
🔄 Cognitive apprenticeship approaches:
Further detail
📌 Scaffolding provides motivational support to sustain students' engagement and interest, as well as cognitive support to move them toward deeper learning.
Motivational scaffolding can:
🔄 Cognitive scaffolding:
📌 Problem-based learning begins with an authentic problem that matters to students and uses the search for a real solution to support learning in an important subject.
★ Must-know
📌 Collaboration is a philosophy of relating, learning, and working that respects differences, shares authority, and builds on distributed knowledge, whereas cooperation is working together to attain a shared goal.
True cooperative learning includes five elements:
Conformity pressure, misused rewards, or domination by one student can make group interaction unproductive and unreflective; without accuracy feedback, misconceptions may be reinforced or incorrect ideas combined into superficial or incorrect understanding.
Further detail
Promotive interaction occurs when group members encourage and facilitate one another's efforts, usually face-to-face and close together but potentially through digital media across the world.
Individual accountability means that, despite working and helping one another, each group member must demonstrate learning independently, often through individual tests or other assessments.
Collaborative skills include:
Theories explain cooperative-group learning through: (Vygotsky):
📌 A structured task pairs well with a structured cooperative technique, and extrinsic rewards and work-focused roles can support motivation, effort, and persistence in that setting.
📌 When cooperative learning aims to develop higher-order thinking and problem solving, strategies that encourage extended productive interaction are appropriate, while rewards may divert attention from in-depth cognitive processing.
★ Must-know
📌 A learning management system (LMS) is described as the most traditional type of virtual learning environment, a personal learning environment (PLE) supports individualized learning and learner control over how and when learning occurs, and an immersive virtual learning environment (IVLE) simulates a real-world environment for learning activities.
Further detail
An IVLE can let students:
Computational thinking means thinking like a computer scientist to formulate and solve problems that can be addressed with computational processes such as those used by computers.
Digital citizenship includes the ability to critically evaluate the digital media one consumes.
Constructivist practice can challenge teachers to design, facilitate, and scaffold instruction supporting cognitive, behavioral, and affective engagement while integrating technology, managing classroom control, questioning assumptions about best practices, and reconciling student-supported learning with standards-driven instruction.
Technology is a tool, not a guarantee of improved achievement.
| Source | Knowledge assumption | Teaching implication |
|---|---|---|
| External | Knowledge represents the outside world | Direct teaching, feedback, and explanation |
| Internal | Knowledge transforms and reorganizes prior knowledge | Exploration and discovery; teacher guides |
| External and internal | Knowledge develops through interaction, experience, and culture | Guided discovery, teaching, modeling, and social interaction |
| Dimension | Traditional | Flipped |
|---|---|---|
| During class | Teacher-led instruction | Student activities with teacher support |
| Outside class | Paper-based homework | Online lessons, videos, or podcasts |
| Student role | Learner | Teacher and learner |
Take a 63-question practice quiz on Cooperative and Digital Learning, with every answer explained.
1. A teacher asks students to interpret new information by connecting it to their existing ideas and building their own understanding. Which perspective best describes this emphasis?
2. Which pair of ideas do most constructivist perspectives share?
Memorize the key concepts of Cooperative and Digital Learning with 96 flashcards.
What does constructivism emphasize about learners and understanding?
Learners actively build understanding and make sense of information.
Which source, cited as 2014, describes constructivist agreement about active learning and social interaction?
Chi & Wylie, 2014.
What does cognitive constructivism emphasize about learning?
How individuals build understanding.
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