To the constructivist, concepts, models, theories and

so on are viable if they prove adequate within the

context they were created.'
In any qualitative research, the aim is to "engage in
research that probes for deeper understanding rather
than examining surface features and constructivism
may facilitate toward that aim.





Researches as craftsmen, as toolmakers (Spivey) who
are part of a network that creates knowledge and
ultimately guides practice
They do not merely observe organizational structures
and report their findings. They also play a role in the
process determining which structures are more or
less likely to be adopted. They are part of a
community of practice, which institutionally
generates knowledge about strategy through a series
of rule-based conversations. By defining the shared
assumptions of these conversations, communities,
and institutions, we can have a more fine-grained
understanding of the theories and stories in our field.
Knowledge is invented, not discovered.






HOOVER
1. Rather, learners come to learning situations with
knowledge gained from previous experience, and that
prior knowledge influences what new or modified
knowledge they will construct from new learning
experiences.
2. Learners confront their understanding in light of what
they encounter in the new learning situation. If what
learners encounter is inconsistent with their current
understanding, their understanding can change to
accommodate new experience. Learners remain
active throughout this process: they apply current
understandings, note relevant elements in new
learning experiences, judge the consistency of prior
and emerging knowledge, and based on that
judgment, they can modify knowledge.
3. Coming to know is an adaptive process that
organizes one's experiential world; it does not
discover an independent, pre-existing world outside
the mind of the knower (Matthews, 1992).

HIPPS
1. The constructivist notion, that reality is changing
whether the observer wishes it or not (Hipps, 1993), is
an indication of multiple or possibly diverse
constructions of reality. Constructivism values multiple
realities that people have in their minds.







While realists conceive of the research process as
excavation, where the terrain of phenomena is mined
for valuable nuggets of naturally occurring insight,
constructivists view the process more as an act of
sculpting, where the imagination (or the theory-base)
of the artist interacts with the medium of phenomena
to create a model of reality which we call knowledge.
The constructivist view is therefore premised on the
belief that a researcher always approaches a
problem with a preconceived notion (a default
theory) about the nature of the problem, and by
implication, a possible solution for it (Fosnot, 1996).
Constructivists believe that as long as researchers are
transparent about their a priori theoretical position,
the process of research is not impeded.






2. Constructivists have pre-conceived notions (biases)
that are considered the building blocks of their findings
3. This contention by constructivists effectively
negates the issue of whether theory drives practice or
vice versa. As Butts and Brown (1989) theorize, there
exists a phase of pretheoretical praxis that leads to the
formalization of theory, and ultimately guides future
praxis.






2 What is Constructivism?
the view that all knowledge is contingent upon
human practices, being constructed in and out of
interaction between human beings and their world,
and developed and transmitted within an essentially
social context (Crotty)
Examines the relationship to reality by dealing with
constructive processes in approaching it (Flick)

3 What is Constructivism?
Constructivists challenge the notion that research is
conducted by impartial, detached, value-neutral
subjects, who seek to uncover clearly discernable
objects or phenomena (Mir & Watson)
Researches as craftsmen, as toolmakers (Spivey)
Researches as actors rather than mere information
processors or reactors (Mir & Watson)

4 Constructed knowledge
Learners build new knowledge upon the foundation of
previous learning (Hoover)
Learners construct new understandings using what they
already know. There is no tabula rasa on which new
knowledge is etched.
Learning is active rather than passive.
Reality is changing whether the observer wishes it or
not (Hipps)

5 Core assumptions
1. Knowledge is theory-driven.
Sculpting not excavation
Opposes a 'nomothetic' approach to methodology,
which assumes that researchers are essentially
discoverers of 'natural' phenomena, and that adherence
to systematic protocol and technique will eliminate all
biases from the research process

6 Core assumptions
2. The separation of the researcher and the phenomena
under investigation is not feasible.
Philosophical positions held by researchers determine
their findings
3. The separation of theory and practice is equally
unfeasible.
Practice exists both before and after theory


7 Core assumptions
4. Researchers are never objective or value-neutral.
Theory is discursive and power-laden
5. Research occurs within a 'community' of scholars
where mutually held assumptions are deployed to
create 'conversations.
6. Constructivism constitutes a methodology.




4. They suggest that theories are transmitted across
space and time through discursive practices. Institutions
are the sites where discourses produce communities of
agreement (Von Glaserfield, 1995).
Taking this issue a step further, some constructivists
suggest that the institutional process is hegemonically
deployed to create theories that suit sectional interests
(Burchell, Gordon, and Miller, 1991). To such
constructivists, theories are little more than reflections
of the dominant power interests of their time.
5. Latour and Woolgar demonstrate that 'the
construction of scientific facts, in particular, is a process
of generating texts whose fate depends on their
subsequent interpretation.
6. Constructivism has been conceptualized as a
methodology, which is distinct from a method. A
method is a tool or a technique that is used in the
process of inquiry. In contrast, a methodology may be
regarded as an 'intricate set of ontological and
epistemological assumptions that a researcher brings to
his or her work' (Prasad, 1997: 2). The distinction
between methodology and method is not a trivial one.
As Machlup (1978) suggests, methodology represents
the doctrine of systematic forms of thought, and in
order to be clear researchers need to be explicit about
their choice of methodology. Thus, a researcher who is
anchored in constructivist methodology may employ a
variety of methods including statistical analysis (e.g.,
Fligstein, 1991) just as a researcher employing a realist
methodology may use qualitative research (e.g.,
Eisenhardt and Bourgeois, 1988)











Constructivism is not a unified programme, but it is
developing in parallel fashion in a number of disciplines:
psychology, sociology, philosophy, neurobiology,
psychiatry and information science.






1. The individual forms differ according to the degree of
structuring and idealization, and this depends on their
functions more concrete as the basis of everyday
action or more abstract as a model in the construction
of scientific theories. Schutz enumerates different
processes which have in common that the formation
of knowledge of the world is not to be understood as
the simple portrayal of given facts, but that the
contents are constructed in a process of active
production.








2. Viable it should fit into the experiential world of the
one who knows








3. Social artifacts products of historically and
culturally situated interchanges among people.








Social scientific knowledge is developed on the basis of
pre-existing everyday knowledge and socially
constructed through this developmental process.
The main idea is the distinction that Schutz makes
between constructs of the first and second degree: the
constructs of the constructs made by the actors on the
social scene. Accordingly, Schutz holds that the
exploration of the general principles according to which
man in daily life organizes his experiences, and
especially those of the social world, is the first task of
the social sciences.
For Schutz, everyday knowledge and cognition become
the basis on which the social scientist develops a more
strongly formalized and generalized version of the
world.
8 Different levels of construction
1. Cognition, perception of the world and knowledge
about it are seen as constructs. (Piaget)
Radical constructivism - maintains that the operations by
means of which we assemble our experiential world can
be explored, and that an awareness of this operating can
help us do it differently and, perhaps, better (Glaserfeld)
2. Social constructivism inquires after the social
conventionalizations, perception and knowledge in
everyday life (Schutz)
3. Constructivist sociology of science seeks to establish
how social, historical, local, pragmatic and other
factors influence scientific discovery in such a way
that scientific facts may be regarded as social
constructs (Latoor & Woulgar)




9 Construction of knowledge
1. All our knowledge of the world, in common-sense as
well as in scientific thinking, involves constructs specific
to the relevant level of thought organization.
Every form of knowledge is constructed by selection
and structuring.
Knowledge are constructed in a process of active
production.




10 Construction of knowledge
2. Radical constructivism (Glaserfeld)
Constructivism leads to a modified concept of
cognition/knowledge. Knowledge is related to the
way in which we organize our experiential world.
It would be unreasonable to confirm the existence
of something that can not be perceived.
Human knowledge is a human construct
Abandons the claim that cognition is true in the
sense that it reflects objective reality. Instead it
only requires that knowledge must be viable




11 Construction of knowledge
3. Social constructivism (Gergen)
The terms and forms by which we achieve
understanding of the world are social artifacts.
Knowledge is constructed in processes of social
interchange and is based on the role of language in
such relationships
The degree to which a given account of the world or
self is sustained across time is not dependent on
the objective validity of the account but on
mutability of social processes.




12 Social scientific knowledge
Are social constructs.
The thought objects constructed by social scientists
refer to, and are founded upon, thought objects
constructed by the common-sense thought of man
living in his everyday life among his fellow men
(Schutz)
Constructs of the second degree
Social scientific research, on the basis of pre-existing
everyday constructs, constructs another version of
the world (multiple realities)
















Examples: literary texts, theater plays
Current interest also focuses on this concept outside
literature and theatre. The debate thematizes mimesis
as a general principle that can be used to demonstrate
understanding of the world and texts: the individual
assimilates himself to the world via mimetic processes.
Mimesis makes it possible for individuals to step out of
themselves, to draw the outer world into their inner
worlds, and to lend expression to their interiority. It
produces an otherwise unattainable proximity to
objects and is thus a necessary condition of
understanding.
This means that social science has already contributed
to determining and constructing the world it is
investigating by means of its results so long as these,
as individual results, can attract to themselves the
attention of a broader public. In this way, its
interpretations and modes of understanding again feed
back into the modes of everyday experience.





Mimesis1 pre-understanding of what human action is,
of its semantics, its symbolism, its temporality. From
this pre-understanding, which is common to poets and
their readers, arises fiction, and with fiction comes the
second form of mimesis which is textual and literary.
Mimesis2 texts, stories
Mimesis3 marks the intersection of the world of text
and the world of hearer or reader. Mimesis3 concerns
the integration of the imaginative or fictive
perspective offered at the level of mimesis2 into actual,
lived experience. Not only are our life stories written,
they must be read, and when they are read they are
taken as ones own and integrated into ones identity
and self-understanding. As time passes, our
circumstances give rise to new experiences and new
opportunities for reflection. We can redescribe our past
experiences, bringing to light unrealized connections
between agents, actors, circumstances, motives or
objects, by drawing connections between the events
retold and events that have occurred since, or by
bringing to light untold details of past events. Of course,
narrative need not have a happy ending.
EXAMPLE: Research: M1: Biases, M2: Data, M3:
Significant of results, application, effect to your lived
experiences






Biographical narration of ones own life is not a
portrayal of factual sequences. It becomes a mimetic
representation of experiences that are constructed
more generally in ones knowledge and more
specifically for this purpose in the interview in the
form of a narrative. On the other hand, the narrative
provides a general framework within which experiences
are ordered, represented, evaluated and so on in
short, within which they are experienced.







Constructivist assumptions may be used as a starting
point for the debate on the question of justifying the
validity of qualitative research in particular because
the validity of knowledge and its determination are a
major problem for radical constructivism which has to
be dealt under the keyword of viability of knowledge,
models, theories or discoveries

13 Scientific knowledge as text
Social scientific analyses are increasingly using the
medium of text for their constructs.
Social scientific constructs, therefore often become
textual constructs, linked in part to the idea that
everyday constructs are textual constructs.




14Mimesis
Concerned with the representation of worlds
natural worlds in symbolic worlds (Aristotle)
Mimesis can therefore be used in a comprehensive
way to mean representation (Reck)
The individual assimilates himself to the world via
mimetic processes.
Interpretations and modes of understanding again
feed back into modes of everyday experience.




15 Mimesis as a process
Mimesis
1
preconfiguration of the field of action
Mimesis
2
configuration of the field of action
Mimesis
3
reconfiguration of the field of action
Example: The act of reading the unity of the travel
from mimesis
1
to mimesis
3
by way of mimesis
2





16 Constructivism and qualitative research
Mimetic processes can be found in
Processing of experiences in everyday practice
Production of texts for research purposes
Interviews, biographies, narratives
Mimetic processes create versions of the world which
can then be understood and interpreted through
qualitative research.




17 Constructivism and qualitative research
For qualitative research, constructivist assumptions
become relevant for the understanding of collected
data for example, biographies as constructs.
Constructivist assumptions also become relevant for
the critical analysis of procedure and methodological
requirements
Constructivist assumptions may be used as a starting
point for the debate on the question of justifying the
validity of qualitative research