Section II #2

Chapters in this section present two contrasting epistemic stances: positivist and relativist. However, a third stance, the contextualist or hermeneutical, is also widely recognized. This stance falls somewhere between the strictly objectivist/positivist beliefs about knowing and the purely subjectivist/relativist stance. While designers and educators with a positivist stance generally apply behaviorist principles to the design and development of instruction, those with either a contextualist or relativist epistemological framework employ constructivist theories and methods. However, relativists ascribe to radical constructivist approaches, while contextualists draw upon social constructivist theories and models. Based on what you’ve read about positivist and relativist epistemologies, as well as behaviorist and constructivist approaches, try to more fully describe a contextualist epistemology. How might it differ from either a relativist or positivist stance, and how might social constructivism differ from either behaviorist or radical constructivist approached to learning and instruction?

I am not a fan of the positivist approach to education. I feel as thought, it is very "old school" and probably why I hated school so much during my younger years. All learners are different, come from different backgrouds, and thier prior knowledge will always differ. To be so concrete in the field of education, is not eduation, but rather indoctrination. Positivism, a philosphy brought forth by an elite French man called Auguste Comte, was developed as the Old Regime in France was crumbling as a result of the French Revolution. He believed in a social order in which experts were experts and everyone else should ask no questions and believe what they are told. Well of course an elitist would want education to be that way. How dare the poor become educated and take his land away! I digress, my point is that I believe freedom for all humans comes with education. There is a reason prisons are filled with the uneducated, and the poor have a difficult time coming out of poverty. Furthermore, isn't it vital to education to know why? To ask questions? To truly believe in what is being taught? This is why I am more in favor of the realtivists approach to education. While I agree that teachers and professors are to facilitate the learning process, and give information to the students, I think it is equally as important to create an educational environment where the student becomes a life-long learner - thirsty for knowledge. In the Constructivists approach, the classroom is designed as such that the students are a part of the learning process. Social Constructivism allows the students to become affected by what they are learning through a real-life process of collaborating with others. Radical Constructivists believe that people all learn differently because we all hear words differently and therefore cannot possibly have the same exact knowledge. This reminds me of a movie I once watched, called "Waking Life" in which there was one scene where two women were discussing this very viewpoint - one of the women said that when two people say they love each other they do not mean the same thing - because each person has thier own experiences and memories of the word, love. This is very deep thinking, of course, but it is worth noting that we do all hold different histories and memories and therefore, it only makes sense that we cannot every really learn the same and have the same knowledge. To me, it seems that constructivists try to take pieces for positivists, realitivsts, social constructivism and radical constructivism, and create  a learning environment that is cohesive to all the different learning philosophies and learning types. Interesting stuff....my brain is hurting. :)