Organizing Curriculum Based upon Constructivism: What to Teach and What Not To

Introduction Knowledge is a personal, inner state of abstraction that is drawn directly through meaning-making of our experiences in real-life situations. Personal interactions with objects of knowledge lead the knowledge seeker to become acquainted or connected with the understanding of facts, concepts, methods, rules and principles through a range of actions such as interpretation, rumination, analytical reasoning and observation. From a pedagogical perspective, knowledge can be construed as the internal state of knowing. It encompasses an intrinsic component that is buttressed by inquiries revolving around the why, and of the phenomena being studied. Knowledge in the learning context can be broadly classified into two main categories: declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge. Ontologically declarative knowledge relates to the what, where and when aspects of temporal and strategic knowledge domains. It is a static description which captures an insight of the physical world through the medium of words, images, sounds and emotions. For all practical purposes declarative knowledge can be identified with explicit knowledge or knowledge that can be coded and clearly articulated in textual, graphical or verbal structures of representations (Nickols, 2000). Since declarative knowledge deals with the exposition of facts, methods, techniques and practices, it can easily be expressed, recorded and disseminated in the form of artifacts, written norms and verbal communications to become explicit knowledge assets. Procedural knowledge is related to the procedure to carry an action out. Knowledge about how to do something is procedural knowledge. Procedural knowledge is instruction-oriented. It focuses on how to obtain a result (Turban & Aronson, 1988). The overview provided of the key concepts of declarative and procedural knowledge forms potentially gives rise to the natural question of how these two categories of knowledge could tie in together organically as the integral components of an educational program. Having worked in reform-minded educational institutions and schools of higher learning that have attempted to frame their curriculum design and instructional practices based upon constructivism as the underpinning epistemology, I have heard questions such as the following making their frequent rounds amongst teaching staff: How much of content information should I deliver to the students and how much of knowledge should I allow students to actively construct on their own through exploration and experimentation? Did I give away too much information in the course of conducting today's class without encouraging learner inquiry and higher order thinking? When and how much should I make use of didactic and dialogic instructional strategies in facilitating constructivist-based teaching approaches to foster authentic learning environments in my classes? In view of these and similar questions, I hope to outline a theoretical framework in the following sections that intrinsically blends together the pedagogy of the two classes of declarative and procedural knowledge within a learning design that is essentially learner-centric. I wish to highlight that the framework that I have proposed is not a rigid, granular structure that ought to be adhered to and applied in all specific contexts. Rather it is a flexible, generic model that could inform and guide educational practioners in their attempts at developing, organizing and implementing disciplinary curricula anchored upon principles of constructivism. My proposed framework is an adaptation based upon the critical evaluation of the ideas formulated by Nickols (2000) in his heuristics for thinking about knowledge. An Integrated Framework of Constructivist-Based Curricula Design Rationale of Proposed Framework Nickols has organized his framework from a knowledge management perspective. …