Organizing curriculum based upon constructivism: what to teach and what not to.

Introduction

Knowledge is a personal, inner state of abstraction that is drawn directly through meaning-making of our experiences in real-life situations. Personal interactions with objects of knowledge lead the knowledge seeker to become acquainted or connected with the understanding of facts, concepts, methods, rules and principles through a range of actions such as interpretation, rumination, analytical reasoning and observation. From a pedagogical perspective, knowledge can be construed as the internal state of knowing. It encompasses an intrinsic component that is buttressed by inquiries revolving around the "what," "why," and "how" of the phenomena being studied.

Knowledge in the learning context can be broadly classified into two main categories: declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge.

Ontologically declarative knowledge relates to the what, where and when aspects of temporal and strategic knowledge domains. It is a static description which captures an insight of the physical world through the medium of words, images, sounds and emotions. For all practical purposes declarative knowledge can be identified with explicit knowledge or knowledge that can be coded and clearly articulated in textual, graphical or verbal structures of representations (Nickols, 2000). Since declarative knowledge deals with the exposition of facts, methods, techniques and practices, it can easily be expressed, recorded and disseminated in the form of artifacts, written norms and verbal communications to become explicit knowledge assets.

Procedural knowledge is related to the procedure to carry an action out. Knowledge about how to do something is procedural knowledge. Procedural knowledge is instruction-oriented. It focuses on how to obtain a result (Turban & Aronson, 1988).

The overview provided of the key concepts of declarative and procedural knowledge forms potentially gives rise to the natural question of how these two categories of knowledge could tie in together organically as the integral components of an educational program. Having worked in reform-minded educational institutions and schools of higher learning that have attempted to frame their curriculum design and instructional practices based upon constructivism as the underpinning epistemology, I have heard questions such as the following making their frequent rounds amongst teaching staff: "How much of content information should I deliver to the students and how much of knowledge should I allow students to actively construct on their own through exploration and experimentation?" "Did I give away too much information in the course of conducting today's class without encouraging learner inquiry and higher order thinking?" "When and how much should I make use of didactic and dialogic instructional strategies in facilitating constructivist-based teaching approaches to foster authentic learning environments in my classes?"

In view of these and similar questions, I hope to outline a theoretical framework in the following sections that intrinsically blends together the pedagogy of the two classes of declarative and procedural knowledge within a learning design that is essentially learner-centric. I wish to highlight that the framework that I have proposed is not a rigid, granular structure that ought to be adhered to and applied in all specific contexts. Rather it is a flexible, generic model that could inform and guide educational practioners in their attempts at developing, organizing and implementing disciplinary curricula anchored upon principles of constructivism. My proposed framework is an adaptation based upon the critical evaluation of the ideas formulated by Nickols (2000) in his heuristics for thinking about knowledge.

An Integrated Framework of Constructivist-Based Curricula Design

Rationale of Proposed Framework

Nickols has organized his framework from a knowledge management perspective. In this section, I will critically analyze the inherent strengths and drawbacks of his framework from a constructivist pedagogical perspective. Based upon such an understanding, I will then be able to better direct readers to the description of the key elements of my proposed framework.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The following flowchart encapsulates the principles put forth by Nickols:

Nickols explicates in the following paragraph his views on how knowledge can be classified as either declarative or procedural which he equates respectively with explicit and tacit knowledge forms depending upon the context, purpose, orientation and scope of the subject matter under scrutiny. I am in agreement with the following assertion that he made:

   I choose to classify all descriptions of knowledge as declarative
   and reserve procedural for application to situations in which the
   knowing may be said to be in the doing ... declarative knowledge
   ties to 'describing' and procedural knowledge ties to 'doing'.
   Thus for my purposes I am able to comfortably view all procedural
   knowledge as tacit just as all declarative knowledge is explicit.
   (p. 4)

Further deliberating on the texture of procedural, tacit knowledge, Nickols cites the example Nonaka (1991) presents in his widely acclaimed article of how a product developer, Ikuro Tanaka apprenticed herself to a hotel chef famous for the quality of his bread and learning how to make bread in the expert's way including an unusual kneading technique.

   Tacit knowledge cannot be articulated. Thus although Nonaka's
   product developer was clearly able to devise a set of product
   specifications based on what she learned while apprenticed to
   the chef in question, it seems doubtful that she articulated
   the chef's tacit knowledge or her own. It seems more likely that
   she articulated some rules or principles or descriptions of
   procedures, that is, she created some declarative knowledge
   that subsequently proved useful in the design and development of
   the bread making machine. (p. 6)

Again I concur with Nickols's arguments on the inherently tacit nature of procedural knowledge structures. However his repeated references to knowledge representations, both procedural and declarative being acquired through various modes is an idea that is rather disconcerting and does not sit comfortably with me. One good example of this line of thinking is his following statement "the systematic or facilitated acquisition of knowledge, not simply learning from experience." Such a viewpoint though well-intentioned from a knowledge management perspective seems to be largely ignorant of key learning theories and recent educational research developments and appears to be premised on an information delivery theory of instruction. The information delivery theory of instruction argues that teaching predominantly consists of dissemination of loads of information with learning constituting of mechanically acquiring such information through memorization and recalling.

Pedagogically how viable and justified is such an assertion? Clark and Mayer (2003) counter that the information delivery theory is based on an incorrect conception of how learning occurs. It erroneously assumes that the minds of learners are empty vessels which can be filled with unlimited amounts of information mimicking the modes of operational functioning of computers. Such a hypothesis fails to take into account the scientific processes of active meaning-making, cognitive modeling and construction of mental schemas embodied in intentional learning that proponents of constructivism champion. The use of the word acquisition connotes a passive style of learning disposition where the learner absorbs huge chunks of information and participates in an educational initiative in which the instructor predefines and drives the attainment of instructional objectives that are usually divorced from the realities of learners' previous experiences.

Educational theorists such as Dewey (1937/1997) have criticized such limited notions of learning as being fallacious, resulting in miseducative experiences. According to Dewey a positive educative experience "arouses curiosity, strengthens initiatives, sets up desires and purposes that are sufficiently intense to carry a person over a dead place in the future" (p. 38). Dewey's principle of continuity of experience calls for learning to be a continuous process of reconstructing experiences. On the other hand a miseducative experience "has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience" (p. 25). The principle of continuity posits that "every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after " (p. 35). The prior experiences of learners need to be the starting point in organizing an instructional curriculum that is both robust and engaging. This ensures that with the progression of instruction, the current scope of these experiences widen and coalesce into fuller, richer and thicker forms.

In defining the subject matter for a curriculum that incorporates learners' prior knowledge and situates learning within the formation of a continuum of generative experiences, what should be the epistemological order of declarative and procedural knowledge representations? What instructional strategies could be effectively adopted to strategically enforce such a progressive order to achieve learning outcomes rooted in the precepts of constructivism? Most existing models of skill learning are top-down (Sun & Peterson, 1997, 1998) with the underlying assumption being that individuals learn generic, verbal, declarative knowledge first and then through practice, turn such knowledge into specific, usable procedural skill (Anderson, 1983, 1993; Ackerman, 1988). Some experts (Anderson & Fincham, 1994) believe otherwise in that some procedural skills develop prior to the learning of declarative knowledge, with explicit, declarative knowledge being constructed only after the skill is at least partially developed.

I personally am of the opinion that some low-level skills domains permit the bottom-up approach to learning where procedural knowledge is learned and then declarative knowledge expressed. On the other hand, development of most other skills, especially those that are cognitively complex and structurally interdisciplinary such as in the physical sciences and computer programming, require the learning of declarative knowledge prior to the construction of procedural knowledge. This enables one to perform the complicated task with no access to the declarative knowledge and without conscious awareness of the specific details and intricacies involved. The underlying logic is that initial foundation declarative knowledge facilitates the transfer of skills, speeds up the learning process in new settings and enables the communication of knowledge and skills to others (Willingham, Nissen, Bullemer, 1989; Sun & Peterson, 1998). Declarative knowledge lays the knowledge foundation in place which when acted upon subsequently through situated practice becomes converted to tacit, procedural forms (Anderson, 1982). This transition happens in gradual, concurrent ways through continuous experiential learning. When actualized and internalized, the learner is able to automatically perform the actions of the task though he/ she is unable to analytically nor heuristically communicate the whys and hows of carrying out the procedures within the task. Such preliminary, prerequisite declarative knowledge could be activated within learners if they have the prior knowledge or otherwise it needs to be communicated to them before they attempt to learn new procedural knowledge.

Description of Knowledge Components of Proposed Framework

In the knowledge taxonomy of my framework, I have chosen to classify declarative knowledge into two broad, functional forms i.e. basic and connected/extended factual knowledge. When verbal information which is originally in an abstract form gains a meaningful representation as organized bodies of knowledge, it becomes transformed into usable, declarative knowledge.

In my taxonomy, for most working purposes the order of instructional sequencing is organized such that declarative knowledge in its basic form is acquired first by learners followed by learning of connected/ extended declarative knowledge. Both of these categories of knowledge lay the epistemological groundwork for learners to interact with the objects of declarative knowledge through a range of learning activities and instructional tasks to then learn the intrinsic, procedural knowledge of processes and skills. In my model, procedural knowledge also subsumes systemic knowledge where the learner is aware of the dynamics of the relationships governing the different component and sub-component parts that constitute the learning system.

Basic declarative knowledge constitutes verbal or written statements that express relations between two or more named objects or events and details about their properties (Gagne, Wager, Golas & Keller, 2003). Such information could also be details on episodes, cause/ effect sequences, time sequences or general principles. Examples of such statements in science include "Plants are usually green in color," "Length is defined as the physical distance between two points," "Boiling point is defined as the temperature at which a liquid turns from a liquid state to a gaseous state." In history, basic declarative knowledge statements could be the following: "President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963" and "The war was lost due to lack of logistical planning." Such statements convey meanings that could be related to other existing facts and integrated to build-up a larger set of knowledge or extended to learn new facts. I call this second category of knowledge as connected/extended declarative knowledge in recognition of the fact that such knowledge is a natural expansion of basic declarative knowledge and which when acted upon to execute a set of actions, involving either mental or motor skills becomes transformed to procedural knowledge. Connected/extended knowledge includes the learning of a variety of concepts, rules and principles to gain intellectual processing capabilities. For example when the concept of length is understood in mathematics, it could be logically extended in its usage to understand Pythagoras Theorem and its associated application. In science the basic principle of boiling point could be further extended to explore how various environmental variables could alter the boiling point of a liquid.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

The maturation of the learning process results in the development of vital procedural knowledge or knowledge in the doing. Encompassing psychomotor and cognitive components, procedural knowledge is inherently functional enabling performance of varied tasks. Such procedural knowledge is the consummation of declarative knowledge which originally being descriptive is now employed to execute a set of actions to accomplish a task. Such tasks include psychomotor activities such as diagnosis, troubleshooting and repairing of mechanical systems as well as cognitive activities such as learning a foreign language. The skills and processes embodied in the learning of procedural knowledge are in essence intrinsic and complex that the expert is able to enforce the course of action and the corollary procedures of the task intuitively and sub-consciously that he/she is unable to communicate explicitly to others the functional mechanisms of procedural knowledge. I concur with Nickols (2000) in his conclusions that though some knowledge theorists are of the opinion that the outputs of procedural knowledge could be represented as heuristics, alogrithms or instructional/flow charts in actuality such explicit descriptions of acts could only be termed as implicit knowledge and not procedural knowledge. To quote Nickols, "a description of an act is not the act just as the map is not territory" (p. 4). An example that I could put forward to emphasize the point that procedural knowledge is innately tacit and resides in an internalized structure of cognitive existence is the case of an expert troubleshooter who is able to analyze a malfunctioning air-conditioning system for its fault state configuration and repair it accordingly. Though he/she may be able to present a procedural manual to guide novices step-by-step, the techniques of how they could on their own perform the troubleshooting task in a systematic manner.?? However, such explicit specifications could hardly be considered as the fitting match or representation of the entire body of tacit knowledge held by the troubleshooter. The expert troubleshooter's base of procedural knowledge could be rich and vast, having been collected from previous working experiences that he/she may intuitively depart from the natural order of course of action expressed in the original set of guidelines at a certain juncture of the troubleshooting process to ensure a more rapid and efficient completion of the task. The same could be said of an expert doctor who would not be able to fully express in words his/her consolidated tacit medical expertise on the procedures of detecting various ailments and prescribing cures for them. All that the expert doctor could do is to articulate in a limited way some generic recommendations of how beginner doctors could handle the diagnosis of their patients. Such recommendations at best can be categorized as declarative knowledge.

Scaffolding Instructional Strategies

In this section I will explain the embedded instructional strategies and processes in my proposed framework that support the formation of basic declarative, extended declarative and procedural knowledge formats. Generally a constructivist learning environment is structured to allow the learner to autonomously construct systems of meanings based upon prior knowledge and educative experiences both at an individual level as well as a social level. Dewey (1916/1966b) reasoned that the act of knowing is not an external, independent process and thus logically speaking knowledge cannot be taught since the notion of learning is not constrained to the learning of "true" ideas such as facts and principles but rather the concept of formulating conceptual understandings through generative human experiences. Dewey further argued that "there is no mistake more common in schools than ignoring the self-propelling power of an idea" (1933/1986, p. 341). It is essential that reflective learning activities, as Dewey labeled them, be integrated within curriculum to serve as stimuli in linking the subject matter to be learnt to the experiential world of the learner through the rigors of self-inquiry. This allows the learner to generate and organize new ideas in a spiral manner where the learner seeks out and manipulates information to construct their own meanings out of the array of learning sensations. Such an instructional model facilitates incremental learning where the learner continuously builds new ideas and concepts upon existing mental models or schemas. Gagne, Wager, Golas and Keller (2003) suggest that the mental models or networks of propositions that encompass newly constructed knowledge be linked to larger propositional networks that already exist in memory. For example the instructional units for a history lesson can be organized with students first learning the framework of a historical timeline of key world events which can serve as the frame of reference into which students can actively insert details of each event later on with the progression of the lesson.

I am of the opinion that autonomous knowledge construction is more appropriate for learning connected/extended declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge than for acquiring basic declarative knowledge. Basic declarative knowledge being elementary in its scope does not require a high level of cognitive processing nor analytical reasoning for comprehension and thus there is not much scope for learner-driven construction of meanings. In fact adopting a constructivist epistemology to acquaint learners with fundamental information and ideas could prove to be counter-productive and might unnecessarily complicate the learning process. I believe that an information acquisition mode would suffice in the learning of facts and principles that constitute basic declarative knowledge since the complexity of understanding at this phase is of a rudimentary level. If the basic declarative knowledge needed for the lesson has been learnt before, this prior knowledge can be activated through techniques such as questioning and recalling. Otherwise learners could be encouraged to acquire the new, prerequisite basic declarative knowledge concepts through reading of a variety of resources. For learners who are unfamiliar with the subject matter or are at a lower level of intellectual development, these resources could be provided for by the educators whilst learners who are cognitively better equipped and are capable of directing their own learning could be encouraged to seek out their own resources. However at the end of the stipulated reading period of resources, it is important that educators thoroughly discuss with learners the basic declarative knowledge precepts and explicitly teach them if need be.

Extended/connected declarative knowledge could be learnt through instructional strategies where the teachers plays the role of facilitators, enabling learners' active construction of new knowledge through modes of self-discovery and experimentation that increase learners' ability to grasp, transform and transfer content being learnt. One such strategy is affording opportunities for varied practice and spaced reviews. Traditional practice sessions and spaced reviews are essentially of a drill and practice nature where learning is emphasized through remembering, repetition and recalling information in isolated or unrelated contexts to retrieve acquired information from memory. However a constructivist approach to practice and spaced reviews involves task-oriented learning activities where learners are exposed to an array of cognitive processes involving comprehending, applying, creating, elaborating, managing, critiquing and cross-referencing the body of prerequisite basic declarative knowledge to build up new extended/connected knowledge structures. A key component of these activities could be the requirement for learners to either verbally or in writing explain the rationale of their thought processes while constructing knowledge schemas. These oral or written descriptions could serve as "think-aloud" protocols and enable facilitators to ascertain students' intellectual development and highlight to learners the necessity to be aware of metacognitive strategies. Metacognition being an internal processing act makes use of and governs a system of cognitive strategies to monitor, regulate and control learning and memory processes (Flavell, 1979). For example, a lesson on Pythagoras Theorem could be designed based upon task-specific practice activities which tease out students' understanding and learning in structured ways. Firstly, the facilitator activates students' prior basic knowledge of the definitions of length and other related information such as units of measurements and how lengths can be measured. If such foundation knowledge is found lacking in the students, the facilitator explicitly needs to teach such content at the onset of the lesson. Following this, students could be allocated some "hands-on" time to apply the basic knowledge by manipulating a variety of triangles of different sizes and measuring the lengths of the sides of the triangles. In the course of students working on the task, facilitators could provide verbal cues to prompt students to probe and reflect deeper the relationships between the lengths of the sides of the triangle. Students are thus progressively guided to draw their own inferences from their personal learning experiences to gradually come to understand the principle of Pythagoras Theorem.

Procedural knowledge as I have argued for earlier is inherently tacit and resides in the minds of the experts. Thus it cannot be transferred through articulation or communication from the experts to novice learners. However constructivist curriculum designers could employ some instructional methods for facilitating learners' construction of procedural knowledge. Planning for cognitive apprenticeship is one such method (Gagne, Wager, Golas, & Keller, 2003). Historically, apprenticeships are learning situations where the learner works alongside the experienced individual. This instructional technique includes observation, coaching, practice and feedback to the learner. Cognitive apprenticeships do not imply the exact transfer of mental models from the expert to the novice since such a transfer is not plausible. Rather through keen observation and constant feedback from the expert, the novice learner develops an in-depth conceptual understanding of issues being studied and in the process develops his/her own mental networks of propositions that make up the new procedural knowledge. Collins, Brown & Newman (1989, p. 459) posit that "cognitive apprenticeship, as we envision it, differs from traditional apprenticeship in that the tasks and problems are chosen to illustrate the power of certain techniques or methods, to give students practice in applying these methods in diverse settings, and to increase the complexity of tasks slowly, so that component skills and models can be integrated."

Yet another instructional strategy that could be effectively employed by educators to facilitate tacit, procedural knowledge construction is through problem-solving. Problem solving is a highly dynamic and multifaceted learning activity that is embedded with context-rich, experience-based problems. Problem solving tasks are normally student-centric and situated based upon a typology of variegated problems that reflect the complexities of real-world situations. The problems could also differ in their demands for the levels of cognitive processing and higher-order thinking required in solving the given problems. The problems could range in a continuum from being well-structured to being ill-structured. During the process of tackling the problems, the students develop an internal repertoire of intellectual skills. Some of these skills include mental representation of the problem structure, construction and manipulation of the cognitive space around these problems, building schemas of conceptual understanding and invoking an array of problem solving strategies (Jonassen, 1998, 2000). Recognizing and actively solving an assortment of problem states allows students to imbibe highly tacit, procedural knowledge which can then be applied or transferred to other similar problem situations.

Conclusion

In efforts at encouraging reflective teaching practices amongst educators and transformational learning amongst learners, many schools and tertiary institutions are encouraging the design and implementation of constructivist-based curriculum models. Constructivism exposes learners to the richness and rigors of objective reasoning, self-inquiry and critical-openness which improves their scholarship and analytical skills. However this does not mean that learners are to be left in the deep end to fend for themselves in their pursuit of gathering knowledge. Rather, in this article I have attempted to explicate a model that integrates the pedagogical orientations of both declarative and procedural knowledge structures. In such a model, educators as facilitators need to be cognizant of the both the diverse cognitive demands of different disciplinary subject content and the epistemological attributes of declarative and procedural knowledge representations. Such an approach has the potential to formulate and organize curriculum content that is meaningful as well as stimulating to learners. Consequently educators need to harness appropriate mediating instructional tools and techniques to progressively guide learners at actively constructing new knowledge schemas through a continuum of generative learning experiences.

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Muthu Kumar

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore