Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T03:52:50.791Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constructivism, the So-Called Semantic Learning Theories, and Situated Cognition versus the Psychological Learning Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2014

Juan José Aparicio  and
María Rodríguez Moneo
Juan José Aparicio*
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
María Rodríguez Moneo
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Juan José Aparicio, Departamento de Psicología Básica I, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Psicología, Campus de Somosaguas, 28223 Madrid (Spain). Phone: 91-3943149 E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper, the perspective of situated cognition, which gave rise both to the pragmatic theories and the so-called semantic theories of learning and has probably become the most representative standpoint of constructivism, is examined. We consider the claim of situated cognition to provide alternative explanations of the learning phenomenon to those of psychology and, especially, to those of the symbolic perspective, currently predominant in cognitive psychology. The level of analysis of situated cognition (i.e., global interactive systems) is considered an inappropriate approach to the problem of learning. From our analysis, it is concluded that the pragmatic theories and the so-called semantic theories of learning which originated in situated cognition can hardly be considered alternatives to the psychological learning theories, and they are unlikely to add anything of interest to the learning theory or to contribute to the improvement of our knowledge about the learning phenomenon.

En este artículo se examina el punto de vista de la cognición situada, que da origen tanto a las teorías pragmáticas como a las llamadas teorías semánticas del aprendizaje y que se ha convertido, probablemente, en la posición más representativa del constructivismo. Nuestro análisis intenta profundizar en la pretensión de la cognición situada de proporcionar explicaciones al fenómeno del aprendizaje alternativas a las de la psicología y, especialmente, a las que se dan desde una perspectiva simbólica, dominante en la psicología cognitiva. Se constata, también, que el nivel de análisis de la cognición situada, el de los sistemas globales interactivos, es inapropiado para abordar el problema del aprendizaje. De nuestro análisis se desprende que las teorías pragmáticas y las llamadas teorías semánticas del aprendizaje derivadas de la cognición situada difícilmente pueden constituirse en una alternativa a las teorías del aprendizaje desarrolladas en la psicología e, incluso, se pone en duda que puedan aportar algo de interés a la teoría del aprendizaje y contribuir, así, al desarrollo de nuestros conocimientos sobre el fenómeno del aprendizaje.

Keywords

constructivismcognitive theories of learningsymbolic theoriespragmatic theoriessituated cognitionsituated learningconstructivismoteorías cognitivas del aprendizajeteorías simbólicasteorías pragmáticascognición situadaaprendizaje situado
Type
Articles
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , November 2005 , pp. 180 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agre, P.E., & Chapman, D. (1987). Pengi: An implementation of a theory of activity. Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 268–272). Menlo Park, CA: American Association for Artificial Intelligence.Google Scholar
Anderson, J.R. (1976). Language memory and thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, J.R. (1990). The adaptive character of thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Anderson, J.R. (1991). Is human cognition adaptive? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14, 471–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, J.R., Reder, L., & Simon, H.A. (1996). Situated learning and education. Educational Researcher, 25, 5–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, J.R., Reder, L., & Simon, H.A. (1997). Situative and cognitive perspectives: Form versus substance. Educational Researcher, 26, 18–21.Google Scholar
Aparicio, J.J. (1986). El marxismo y la construcción de teorías en psicología. In Reyes, R. (Ed.), Cien años después de Marx. (pp. 618–622). Madrid: Akal.Google Scholar
Aparicio, J.J. (1991). Los modelos animales en los actuales estudios sobre el aprendizaje humano. Psicothema, 3, 59–72.Google Scholar
Aparicio, J.J., & Rodríguez Moneo, M. (2000). Los estudios de cambio conceptual y las aportaciones de la psicología del aprendizaje. Tarbiya: Revista de Investigación e Innovación Educativa, 26, 13–30.Google Scholar
Baddeley, A.D. (1976). The psychology of memory. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Bickhard, M.H. (1992). How does the environment affect the person? In Winegar, L. T. & Valsiner, J. (Eds.), Children's development in social context (pp. 63–92). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Brooks, R.A. (1991). New approaches to robotics. Science, 253, 1227–1232.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18, 32–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carraher, T.N., Carraher, D.W., & Schlieman, A.D. (1985). Mathematics in streets and in schools. British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 3, 21–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ceci, S.J., & Roazzi, A. (1994). The effects of contexts on cognition: Postcards from Brazil. In Stemberg, R.J. & Wagner, R.K. (Eds.), Mind in context: Interactionist perspectives on human intelligence (pp. 74–101) Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clancey, W.J. (1992). The frame of reference problem in the design of intelligent machines. In VanLehn, K. (Ed.), Architectures for intelligence (pp. 357–424). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Comber, L. C. & Keeves, J. P. (1973). Science education in nineteen countries. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Dewey, J. (1896). The reflex arc concept in psychology. The Psychological Review, 3, 357–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewey, J. (1929). Experience and nature. New York: W. W. Norton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewey, J. (1942). How is mind to be known. The Journal of Philosophy, 39, 29–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. (1949). Knowing and the known. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Druckman, D., & Bjork, R.A. (Eds.). (1994). Learning, remembering, believing: Enhancing team and individual performance. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.Google Scholar
Frege, G. (1892). Über Sinn und Bedeutung. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 100, 25–50. Translated as ‘On Sense and Reference’ by M. Black in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, P. Geach and M. Black (eds. and trans.), Oxford: Blackwell, third edition, 1980.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. (1989). The mechanisms of analogical learning. In Vosniadou, S. & Ortony, A. (Eds.), Similarity and analogical reasoning (pp. 199–241). London: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Miflin.Google Scholar
Greeno, J.G. (1997). On claims that answer the wrong questions. Educational Researcher, 26, 5–17.Google Scholar
Greeno, J.G. (1998). The situativity of knowing, learning and research. American Psychologist, 53, 5–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, G. (1989). Some philosophical issues in cognitive science: Qualia, intentionality, and the mind body problem. In Posner, M. I. (Ed.), Foundations of Cognitive Science. Cambridge. MA.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hmelo, C.E., & Narayan, N.H. (1995, July). Anchors, cases, problems, and scenarios as contexts for learning. In Moore, J.D. & Lehman, J.F. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 5–8). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Holland, J.H., Holyoak, K.J., Nisbett, R.E., & Thagard, P.R. (1986). Induction: Processes of inference, learning, and discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Holyoak, K.J. (1985). The pragmatics of analogical transfer. In Bower, G.H. (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 59–87). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1983). Mental models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kieras, D.E., & Bovair, S. (1986). The acquisition of procedures from text: A production system analysis of transfer of training. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 507–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kieras, D.E., & Polson, P.G. (1985). An approach to the formal analysis of user complexity. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 4, 399–424.Google Scholar
Kintsch, W. (1977). Memory and cognition. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Lave, J. (1977). Tailor-made experiments and evaluating the intellectual consequences of apprenticeship training. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Institute for Comparative Human Development, 1, 1–3.Google Scholar
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leontiev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Lowe, C. F. (1983). Radical behaviorism and human psychology. In Davey, G. (Ed.), Animal models of human behavior (pp. 71–94). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Luria, A. R. (1976). Cognitive development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Malinowski, B. (1961). Argonauts of the western Pacific. New York: Dutton. (Original work published 1922)Google Scholar
Marr, D. (1982). Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. San Francisco: Freeman.Google Scholar
Mead, M. (1928). Coming of age in Samoa. New York: Morrow.Google Scholar
Mitchell, T.M. (1982). Generalization as search. Artificial Intelligence, 18, 203–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, T.M. (1983). Learning and problem solving. Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Los Altos, CA: Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Nelson, T.O. (1976). Reinforcement and human memory. In Estes, W.K. (Ed.), Handbook of learning and cognitive processes (Vol 3, pp. 207–246). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Newell, A. (1973). Production systems: Models of control structures. En Chase, W. G. (Ed.), Visual Information Processing (pp. 466–526). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Newell, A. (1980). Physical symbol systems. Cognitive Science, 4, 135–183.Google Scholar
Newell, A., Rosenbloom, P.S., & Laird, J.E. (1989). Symbolic architectures for cognition. In Posner, M.I. (Ed.), Foundations of cognitive science (pp. 93–131). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, A. & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human problem solving. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: LEA.Google Scholar
Pascual-Leone, J. (1980). Constructive problems for constructive theories: The current relevance of Piaget's work and a critique of information processing simulation psychology. In Kluwe, R.H. & Spada, H. (Eds.), Developmental models of thinking (pp. 263–296). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Piaget, J. (1970). Genetic epistemology. (Duckworth, E., Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piaget, J. (1971). Psychology and epistemology. (A. Rosin, Trans.). New York: Grossman. (Original work published 1970.)Google Scholar
Pylyshyn, Z.W. (1980). The “causal power” of machines. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 442–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez Moneo, M. (1999). Conocimiento previo y cambio conceptual. Buenos Aires: Aike.Google Scholar
Rogoff, B., & Lave, J. (Eds.). (1984). Everyday cognition: Its development in social context. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rosembloom, P.S., & Newell, A. (1986). The chunking of goal hierarchies: A generalized model of practice. In Michalski, R.S., Carbonell, J.G., & Mitchell, T.M. (Eds.), Machine learning: An artificial intelligence approach (Vol. 2, pp. 247–288). Los Altos, CA: Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Ryle, G. (1949). Concept of the mind. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Searle, J. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. The behavioral and brain sciences, 3, 417–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. (1983). Intentionality: An essay in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. (1984). Minds, brains and science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Seel, N.M. (2001). Epistemology, situated cognition, and mental models: “Like a bridge over troubled water.” Instructional Science, 29, 403–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singley, M.K., & Anderson, J.R. (1985). The transfer of text editing skill. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 22, 403–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singley, M.K., & Anderson, J.R. (1989). The transfer of cognitive skill. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Skinner, B. F. (1984). Coming to terms with private events. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 572–581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slavin, R.E. (1995). Cooperative learning: Theory, research, and practice (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Steffe, L.P., & Gale, J. (1995). A constructivist approach to teaching. In Steffe, L. P. & Gale, J. (Eds.), Constructivism in education (pp. 489–523). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Suchman, L.A. (1987). Plans and situated action: The problem of human-machine communication. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
VanLehn, K. (1989). Problem solving and cognitive skill acquisition. In Posner, M. I. (Ed.), Foundations of Cognitive Science (pp. 527–579). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vera, A.H., & Simon, H.A. (1993). Situated action: A symbolic interpretation. Cognitive Science, 17, 7–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vigotski, L.S. (1962). Thought and language. New York: Wiley. (Original work published 1934.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vigotski, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar