The major aspect [of kitchen math] is not the failure of School but the success of people who had developed their own methods for solving such problems – not what School failed to convey to them but what they constructed for themselves.

Seymour Papert, The Children’s Machine

Our classroom was a living model of Piagetian learning by discovery and we spent a good deal of time in front of whiteboards, in break-out groups, brainstorming over how elements of a curriculum could help students build personal understanding of the material and actively create meaning from it. I was first introduced to growth mindset and constructivism as part of this instructional design class that I took in Fall 2012. Until meeting my colleagues in that class, I had absolutely no contact with the world of K-12 education for the better part of a decade.

Although we did not cover the roots of this approach, favoring modern-day classics like Grant Wiggins’ Understanding by Design, the constructivist approach to pedagogy is rooted in Jean Piaget’s primary research into children’s theory of mind. Piaget discovered, among other things, that children are not adults; that is, they have fundamentally and consistently different conceptualizations of the world than adults do.

For example, adults can apply the concept of “quantity” to either volume or some other dimension depending on context. However young children struggle with this differentiation. If a child of 5 is shown two containers of the same volume but different height, they are most likely to say that the taller one can hold “more,” even if water is poured from one container to the other in front of their eyes. In a child’s mind, the concepts of quantity and height are equivalent, but an adult will understand that the quantity being referred to is volume, not height. While young children understand a meaning behind words like “more” or “less,” their grasp of these concepts is fundamentally different than how adults interpret the same words – but also consistent and predictable.

While at first blush, this might seem a trivial point – children, after all, eventually grow to conceptualize the world as an adult does. However, as Piaget notes, if we insist on educating people in childhood when their brain is best at acquiring information, then those efforts might be best spent in framing the topics in a manner in which child might correctly perceive them.

This revelation has led to the constructivist approach to pedagogy: the best way for a child, or anyone, to learn, is to construct knowledge in their own minds, within their own pre-existing cognitive framework. Why shouldn’t curriculum be designed to accomodate this processual acquisition of knowledge?

If there is overwhelming evidence that constructivist approach creates the most enduring learning experiences, why are most public schools firmly teacher-oriented? What are the advantages of an instructionist pedagogy that have kept it entrenched for so long?