---
title: "Constructivism"
artifact: "summary"
resource_person: "Dr Lindsay O'Neill"
resource_person_role: "Instructional designer and educator"
vertical: "pedagogy"
module: "Learning Theories"
lesson: "Constructivism"
lesson_key: "constructivism"
source: "curated"
source_channel: "Lindsay O'Neill, MLIS, EdD"
---
# Constructivism

**Resource person:** Dr Lindsay O'Neill - Instructional designer and educator

**Curated from:** Lindsay O'Neill, MLIS, EdD

## Summary

Constructivism treats learning as the active construction of meaning. Learners meet new material with prior knowledge, habits, language, and experience already in place. They interpret the same explanation through different mental structures, so a teacher needs to surface what students currently think before deciding what will help them move forward.

The video uses three theorists to make that claim practical. Piaget describes cognitive construction through assimilation and accommodation. Vygotsky places social interaction and cultural context at the centre of learning, with support calibrated to a learner's zone of proximal development. Bruner's discovery learning emphasises guided exploration and the structures that help learners find patterns.

In class, constructivist design often appears as a carefully framed problem, a case, an experiment, or a project. Students explain their current model, test it against evidence, hear other interpretations, and revise it. The teacher creates the conditions for that work: useful prompts, examples, scaffolds, feedback, and an authentic assessment. Activity alone is a thin test of learning. The stronger question is whether the activity helped students build a more accurate and usable account of the subject.