Re: construction of mind

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 16:51:38 PST


Hi Huong--

Well, let me try, briefly:

Constructionism: The idea that through their action on the world, humans
construct knowledge of the world. The infant starts out in a primitive,
almost autistic state, and gradually comes to construct knowledge through
active engagement with the environment.

Co-constructionism. The emphasis here is on the idea that BOTH the infant/
human and the infants' social environment are engaged in a two way construction
of knowledge through inter-action. The enviroment is as active as the infant andproduct of their co-activeness vis a vis each other results in the growth of knowledge in each.

Mediated learning is the idea that humans act both directly on the world and
indirectly through mediational means, which may be both other humans and human
made artifacts or other objects. My own preferance is to think of joint-
mediated activity as the basic unit of analysis of all learning, which is
sort of like putting culture into the middle of co-construction, but now
you have three parts, each active in their own way and learning/knowledge/
development are the emergent outcomes of this interaction.

I hope this helps more than it oversimplifies.
mike



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