Constructivist Learning Theory

CORE DEFINITION

Associated with Jean Piaget's genetic epistemology and Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, and consolidated in the late twentieth century. Piaget described assimilation and accommodation as the processes by which existing schemas absorb new experience or are restructured. Vygotsky emphasised that learning is mediated by tools and by more capable others, and introduced the zone of proximal development. The shared claim is that knowledge is constructed by the learner rather than transmitted, and that instruction should therefore create situations that provoke restructuring. The approach does not reject explicit teaching; it locates teaching relative to what the learner already holds.