Radical Constructivism in Higher Ed: A Perfect Paradigm for Non-Directive Teaching or Student-Directed Learning

I have been in search for a learning paradigm that adequately supports non-directive learning (or student-directed learning). The problem is that all of the best candidates fall short of being non-directive AND structured. For instance:

• Learner-Centered Teaching is still teaching. (Doyle, 2011, Learner-Centered Teaching; Weimer, 2013, Learner-Centered Teaching). Both texts describe a teacher who takes seriously their students' perspective, interests, and needs, but who takes responsibility for choosing learning goals, designing activities, and evaluating work.

• Autonomy Supportive Teaching is also still teaching (Whitehead, 2023, AST in Higher Ed). AST provides creative ways of encouraging students to think of their learning as self-directed, but it is actually teacher-directed.

• Self-directed learning (Malcolm Knowles, 1975, Self-Directed Learning) is purely student directed in theory. His practice, however, at least according to his students, was teacher-directed. More of a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of situation. (See John Rachal's 2002 critique "Andragogy's Detectives.")

As I've shared on this website, I think the non-directive teaching style of Carl Rogers is excellent. I've decided lately that it lacks structure and fails to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Non-Directive Teaching of Carl Rogers Lacks Structure

One of the key strategies that Rogers uses in his courses is to hand everything over to students. If teachers provide even a bit of structure, then they (the teachers) will have insinuated their personal goals if even a tiny bit. I have had success with the majority of students when going at it this way. However, Rogers and I have also had our share of classroom frustrations (in his contribution to Rogers' On Becoming a Person, Samuel Tenenbaum admits that the first 2 weeks of a shortened summer course were frustrating and exhausting; he does however explain that he thought this frustration was necessary).

A good deal of students (even in Rogers's time) are there for their grades and credits. They are grateful to spend their class time looking at videos on TikTok. I've waffled back and forth on my satisfaction here. Sure, they're choosing what to do, but they're also withdrawing from their lives. 

I believe it is possible to provide structure without imposing it. Students can provide the structure, then the professor/facilitator can enforce it. Radical constructivist theorist Ernst von Glasersfeld (in his autobiography) has described the teacher as a Shepherding dog: when cows are being moved along a road, all the shepherd can do is get them going. The shepherd cannot make them go or control them once they've gotten going. But the shepherd can anticipate distractions (such as a vacant field adjacent to the road full of deliciously tall grass). This is where the shepherding dog comes in. The dog stands at the entrance to the distraction and nips at the cows' heels to keep them from wandering astray. That's it. Keeping the cows moving in the direction they (the cows) have decided to go.

Non-Directive Teaching Ignores Students' Identities, Perspectives, and Values

To be fair, NDT does not systematically ignore anything. Students are free to choose any topic or go in any direction. But this assumes that all students perceive a college classroom as equally free. The evidence even in this decade (2020s) disputes this assumption. As the contributors to Presumed Incompetent have shown repeatedly: women, students of color, and women of color do not enter college (or the ranks of the professoriate) as equals. Sure, NDT professors do not exacerbate this inequity, but they also take no steps to mitigate against it.

Enter: Constructivism.

Constructivism

Constructivism is a scientific paradigm that rejects the position that there is a common and objective reality that is knowable. Instead, constructivists maintain that reality—whether one exists objectively or not—is always constructed socially between and within persons.

A constructivist rendering of psychology, for example, would dispute the belief in a common set of psychological principles that anybody would find were they to go looking for it. Instead, constructivists maintain that psychology is constructed within a community as a means of understanding why and how humans think, behave, and feel as they do.

Constructivism has a rich history in learning theory dating back at least to Piaget, who argued that understanding requires the assimilation of new bits of information/perceptions into existing networks of knowledge. Therefore constructivist teachers generally recognize that each learner has their own networks of understanding and, consequently, requires a unique means of learning a new concept, etc. In the literature that I have read, constructivist learning theory has become a euphemism for active learning--that is, recognizing the active role the student must play in their learning. (Higher Ed scholar Andrew Holmes argues that radical constructivism has not been achieved in higher ed because professors/administration have not yet allowed students to participate in learning objective creation; "Constructivist Learning in University Undergraduate Programmes: ..." the longest article title ever, 2019, International Journal of Education, 8(1).)

But radical constructivism (qua Ernst von Glasersfeld) rejects even the beginning assumption that there exists a best curriculum--say, a "history of the United States"--that the constructivist teacher can then encourage students to actively learn. Even the history of the United States has been socially constructed and it changes based on who is telling the story (and what political goals they have), as historians have long known. 

Bringing radical constructivism together with non-directive teaching: when students and professor meet at the beginning of the semester, they already have a common objective: they must construct between themselves the subject matter of their discipline. This is all they can do, anyhow, but it generally goes unstated. "We have 16 weeks to build a psychology/history/literary theory that works for us." In conventional classrooms (even in so called constructivist classrooms), it is only the students who are expected to change as a result of the discussions and course work. 

Because each participant is understood not as a separate learner but as an integral co-creator, their unique perspectives, identities, and values become essential features of the construction process. There is no hidden social or political agenda, because there is no one best way of interacting. Significantly, student identities, perspectives, and values are explored (and accepted) at the beginning of the semester. By discussing themselves and their perspectives, students will further recognize/experience that even their identities--their selves--are co-constructed with others (which makes dialogical self theory an important component of radical constructivist classroom mechanics).