The social constructivist perspective and its implications for our understanding of a classroom curriculum

초록

The social constructivist perspective of situated learning has gained considerable momentum in the last decade (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1988). The social constructivist perspective of situated learning could be widely observed from the tradition of studies of classroom interaction to the recent cultural approach to individual thinking. The individualism, which has occupied the mainstream discourse in educational studies, has increasingly been modified by the gradual emergence of new paradigm of social constructivism. The social constructivist perspective of situated learning leads us to examine how the practical circumstances of everyday classroom settings, which is comprehended as a curriculum as students’ experience, would appear in relation to the intended, planned features of a curriculum. It shows also how curricula knowledge in classroom lessons are grounded in the routine activities, which are publicly, jointly transformed by the teacher and students, and thus how they construct the curriculum for both teacher and students alike. I examine a particular approach among diverse social constructivist discourses - the discourse of situated pedagogy and interactional viewpoint of classroom practice. The both of the approaches imply how classroom pedagogy is culturally shaped, particularly in the Korean context. And then, I introduce a Korean study of use of practical and interactional knowledge in elementary science classroom that treats the topic with these two approaches.