Educational psychology

Educational psychology

by Jayasree Paul -
Number of replies: 2
I want to measure the influence of social constructivism in abstract reasoning of students. Is it possible to measure any ones abstract reasoning capacity?
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In reply to Jayasree Paul

Re: Educational psychology

by Matt Bury -
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Hi Jayasree,

As far as I understand it, (social) constructivism is an epistemology, i.e. it's a way of making sense of what we observe of how people, especially young children, learn. Various approaches to pedagogy have been influenced by constructivism so i think a good starting point is which particular pedagogical method(s) you propose to investigate.

Additionally, I'm not sure what you mean by abstract reasoning capacity. From what I understand of the learning sciences, abstraction is the process of taking similar/comparable/analogous experiences, comparing and contrasting them, and identifying consistent properties across them in order to make generalisations about them that describe their underlying structure/properties (also known as inductive reasoning). 

So do you mean inductive reasoning capacity? If so, it's domain specific, e.g. a person who is good at inductive reasoning in physics may have great difficulty with inductive reasoning in chemistry. Prior knowledge/level of expertise in the specific domain is often a strong predictor. In other words, it's not a generic skill but the result of (a lot of) learning in each particular domain.

One avenue that you might find interesting is research into Mediated Learning Experiences (MLEs), more recently sometimes also called Dynamic Assessment, which are derived from Sociocultural Theory (SCT; Vygotsky, et al.). The more notable researchers into MLEs are Reuven Feuerstein and David Tzuriel. They've measured what they call sensitivity to mediation, i.e. the ability of learners to pick up on (in the moment) feedback from teachers and peers and learn from it.

I hope this helps,

Matt smile

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In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Educational psychology

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Jayasree, when you explain "abstract reasoning capacity", could you also add how one measures it?