Abstract
The philosophy and psychology of constructivism has become more and more influential in English language teaching, especially through the popularity of books such as Williams’ and Burden’s Psychology for Language Teachers (1997). However, so far there has not been much critical examination of constructivism in ELT. In this article I argue that the subjective and dualistic notion of reality that some constructivists espouse is incompatible with their professed experimental and social interactionist conception of English language learning. This leads them to an incoherent understanding of language classroom realities. I propose a more philosophically robust and consistent understanding of those realities to serve as a background for reflective teaching practice.
Introduction.
In recent years various psychological and philosophical theories of constructivism have become influential in English language teaching. In part this is owing to their compatibility with already extent, popular educational theories. Like humanism, constructivism focuses on developing the inner world of the individual student. Like progressivism and pragmatism, constructivism emphasizes the creative, autonomous power of the student to discover the world in her own way, and to predict the course of its events in experience rather than be a passive recipient of facts. Yet constructivism has also weathered strong criticisms concerning its alleged subjectivism and relativism. Unfortunately, some constructivists’ convictions about the subjectively construed nature of reality and the opaqueness of the ‘real world’ to our subjective constructions of it render them vulnerable to such criticisms (Phillips, 1995; Mathews, 1998; Reinfried, 2000; Fox, 2001; and Derry, 2005 all pursue these criticisms). Such convictions are ultimately incompatible with constructivists` conception of learning as an experimental undertaking responsive to events in the world, and with their conviction that learning is a socially mediated process. Here I propose to show how this is the case; and I shall work from a philosophically pragmatist perspective to show how a more viable, and robust conception of language learning realities can rescue constructivism in ELT from its critics, and from its own unacknowledged incoherencies.
1. The Consequences of Constructivism’s Subjectivism and Dualism.
For most constructivist perspectives language learning is, ideally, an active process of discovery in which the learner builds up his own complex of interpretations or constructs of the language he is learning. Since these constructs count as knowledge of the language, the learner therefore develops his own knowledge rather than receiving it ready-made from a teacher. The learner experiences curiosity about some unknown aspect of language, and doubt or conflict when it does not match with his existing knowledge. He is then motivated to experiment with it and, through practice (the more varied and stimulating the better), to develop and refine constructs that more and more approximate the general, predictable patterns in the learned language. Not surprisingly, constructivists emphasise the importance of learner autonomy, while still acknowledging initial dependence of the student upon the direction of others (although the question of how much learning is socially mediated divides some constructivists). Such an emphasis upon student autonomy puts constructivism at odds with established teaching traditions in some countries. One important aim for constructivist teachers is to foster self-directed learning in East Asian EFL classrooms, to counter the effects of teacher-centered, teacher-dependent English learning habits in traditional schooling. As I shall argue presently, this is a bone of contention for some EFL theorists. In a constructivist classroom setting, teachers still manage learning, however. They ensure that students are exposed to an organized curriculum of language targets always pitched just above their current level of development, and correct students discreetly, while giving them maximum scope to co-operate with and correct one another (Paul, 2003 provides a composite, accessible summary of constructivism in an EFL setting, which I have drawn on here).
Constructivism has been criticized on philosophical grounds because its adherents supposedly believe that when we build up knowledge of the things we are learning, we are constructing our own ‘reality’. This subjective reality is either the only sort of reality there is for each person, or if an objective reality `in itself` is admitted, it is believed to be inaccessible to our understanding, so we only have our own subjective realities to build and work with. The implication is that constructivism can be dismissed as a self-refuting relativism. For in the end there is no objective viewpoint available to distinguish the validity, the correctness or incorrectness of different constructs, including the constructs about constructivism of the constructivists themselves! If this is true, there are awkward consequences for constructivist English teaching and learning practice. In the end, what recourse does a constructivist teacher or learner have in determining the correctness or incorrectness of that learner’s constructs of a language, or in monitoring her progress towards competence and excellence in a second language? Are not everyone’s constructs of a language equally true and real for them? But 1) if we do reject such relativism and subjectivism, 2) if we do take seriously the teacher’s or more skilled peer’s role in correction and guidance, and 3) if they do make corrections and assessments about progress with reference to general, objective standards external to the student’s individual perspective, what difference would this make to a constructivist understanding of language learning and teaching processes? These ultimately practical questions require a certain level of philosophical engagement, for the ideas they trade in have a philosophical pedigree. I ask for the reader’s patience as I address those questions.
A careful reading of constructivist psychologists influential in English language teaching such as George Kelly, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky yields an ambivalent defense against the criticisms discussed above. If a minimal philosophical definition of realism holds that at least some things are objectively ‘out there’ in the world independently of our conceptions of them, then their realist credentials all appear pretty solid. So there seems little reason to accuse them of believing in ‘subjective’ realities. George Kelly, whose version of constructivism has been increasingly influential in recent English teaching theory, held that our mental constructs and the nature which those constructs fit upon are both real. Constructs are themselves events ‘in nature’, not things that are external to reality. They are also more or less accurate representations of nature which can be tested by their ability to predict other events going on within it (Kelly, 1963, p.8, 43-44, 135-136). Kelly made it clear that human (mental) representations of nature, including even erroneous representations of it, are parts of (physical/real) nature (Kelly, 1963, p. 8, 43). His claim that our constructs of the world are ‘transparent patterns or templates’ which ‘fit over the realities of which the world is composed’ (Kelly, 1963, pp. 8-9) is consistent with this perspective. Jean Piaget emphasized rather more than Kelly did the constraining effect of a causally effective world or reality upon the formation of our ‘schemata’, our interpretations of that world. He noted that from early childhood a conjoint process of assimilation of objects as means to fulfillment of the self’s physical/emotional/cognitive needs and an accommodation to a reality of objects increasingly recognized as external and independent of the self’s will is integral to cognitive development (Piaget, 1955).
The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky also had straightforward realist credentials. In Vygotsky’s thought word meaning rather than ‘constructs’ is a basic unit of human discourse analysis. Meaning reflects reality, but not in the same way as perception does, in the sense of a correspondence between perception and perceived object. Meaning reflects reality in its generalized characters, referring to classes of things existing in the world independent of mind (Vygotsky, 1962).
So why is there so much bother about constructivism being subjective and relativist? Some ambiguities in Kelly’s thought provide clues to understanding this. Kelly does not appear to have embraced completely the idea of reality as something inclusive, that incorporates both constructions of goings-on in the world and those goings-on together as directly interacting events. At times, Kelly can be read as accepting a dualism between the mental and the physical. On this understanding, we (mentally) construe the physical world as it is for us through our constructs. However, the physical world ‘in itself’ remains separate from us and inaccessible to us. We have access only to reality as it is construed through our constructs, which stand between us and the `real world`. This at least is how Kelly’s followers in psychology and education have understood him (Salmon, 1995, p.23; Bannister and Fransella, 1974, pp. 86-87; Fransella, 1995, pp.45-48). In a passage that appears to support this interpretation, Kelly wrote: “The fact that my only approach to reality is through offering some possible construction of it does not discourage me from postulating that it is there. The open question for man is not whether reality exists or not, but what he can make of it” (Kelly, cited in Fransella, 1995, p.46). On this point Kelly’s thought converges with the views of philosophical radical constructivists such as Ernst Von Glassersfeld (Glassersfeld, 1995, p.42). What these latter constructivists mean by reality breaks down into a dualism between the reality that learners subjectively constructin the process of learning and an objective reality inaccessible to them. In the English language classroom then, when students experiment with language, they create a reality for themselves, namely the learned aspect of the language as it is for them at that point. The ambiguous strands in Kelly’s thought have combined with the more straightforwardly subjectivist stance of radical constructivists in recent constructivist theory in language teaching (Williams and Burden, 1997, pp.2, 27-29, 96).1
The dualism between subjective realities and an objective, inaccessible reality imposes a high cost on the coherence of constructivist thought in English teaching. I can only imagine that in this state, it will more likely obscure than aid a “reflective practitioner’s” insight into the realities of day-to-day learning and teaching. Marion Williams’ and Robert Burden’s book Psychology for Language Teachers (1997), an influential introduction of constructivist ideas in English language education, provides a salutary lesson. They understand constructivism in dualistic and subjectivist terms. They are dualistic in asserting that “the objective world may be real but it is not directly accessible to us” (Williams and Burden, 1997, p.96). They are subjectivist in asserting “that each individual constructs his or her own reality and therefore learns different things in different ways even when provided with what seem to be very similar learning experiences” (Williams and Burden, 1997, p.2). It is important to understand what these extraordinary claims entail for a constructivist interpretation of learning: “learning is essentially personal and individual; no two people will learn precisely the same thing from any particular learning situation”. Learner self-perceptions and constructs of the learning process will differ from person to person. One important job for the teacher is to help these diverse learners (make) “sense of their learning in ways that are personal for them” (Williams and Burden, 1997, p.96).
Be that as it may, at least three inconsistencies are apparent in these claims:
1. A world in which each person constructs his/her own reality, and for whom the objective, real world is directly inaccessible, would be a solipsistic world, and one that could only be logically possible. These are strong words indeed, but a term such as ‘reality’ cannot be bandied about lightly. It comes with considerable philosophical and cultural baggage attached. This limits its range of accepted meanings in usage, no matter how much certain philosophers or educational psychologists may strain against it. In established usage, there is a presumption in favour of reality denoting something general and objective. Reality is the sum of what there is in the world for each and every one of us, independent of individual whim or fancy. Moreover, when we say that this or that thing is real, we are giving expression to tacit beliefs about what there is and how it is in the world and – more importantly – distinguishing it from what there isn’t, or what is fictional, fake, inauthentic and so forth.2 That such beliefs are shared is the normal expectation in the run of experience, with disagreement and difference being the exception.
Anyone who deviates from established usage must be prepared to justify why she is doing it, and be prepared to face the consequences of this deviation. One such consequence is the accusation of inconsistency. The easiest philosophical objection to Williams’ and Burden’s subjectivist view is to say “You assert that every person constructs his or her subjective reality. But in saying this very thing, you are adopting an objective viewpoint, making a statement about reality which encompasses each and every person’s viewpoint on reality. A consistent subjectivist could only say “in my subjective construction of reality at least, everyone has their own subjective reality”” (this ultimately self-refuting dimension to radical constructivism has been highlighted by Marcus Reinfeld. See Reinfeld, 2000). But there are problems with Williams’ and Burden’s view which go closer to the concerns of English language teachers.
If Williams and Burden are right, each person would be secure in her own construction as the construction of the world, with its events and things, including other people, being what they are for her. However, she would have no means of checking independently of her point of view that others had the same or different constructions, or of adjudicating which were accurate or not, beginning with her own. For firstly, the very notion of general, verifiable agreement on sameness or difference, accuracy or inaccuracy about constructs presupposes ability to “climb outside” of one’s own point of view and commit oneself to belief in a reality encompassing those constructs as constituent parts, which provides an objective field for assessing their accuracy. Those constructs can then be analysed and compared in concert from several points of view. And secondly, in not being able to experience the objective world directly, a person locked within her own subjective reality would not be able to experience other people or their constructs directly. For they are parts of that objective world too. Then any reflective individual could fall into a kind of perpetual skeptical suspense about the accuracy of her constructs (‘are my constructs of things in the world, or of other people and their beliefs anything like what they are in themselves? How can I check to see if they are or not?’).
Yet Williams’ and Burden’s own interactionist variety of constructionism displays tacit commitment to the idea of a reality encompassing individual constructs, and they at no point succumb to solipsistic skepticism. They admit that in spite of inhabiting a “unique experiential world” we must find ways of “reaching a common understanding together with others”; “The human enterprise depends on a shared reality”. They approvingly cite another constructivist theorist, Phillida Salmon, to the effect that “the teaching-learning encounter is, essentially, a meeting between the personal constructions, the subjective realities of teacher and pupil” (Salmon, cited in Williams and Burden, 1997, p.28). Acknowledgement of classroom efforts to reach a common understanding incorporating different constructs within it undermines commitment to the view that reality is a subjectively construed affair. But drop the whole complicated impedimentia of ‘subjective’ realities, and we have something like a non-dualistic conception of an objective reality or nature encompassing human constructs, constructs which can be directly communicated, shared or ‘subsumed’ and assessed in social transactions (Kelly, 1963, pp.9, 95-102, 136 ).
2. The very notion of ‘Man (sic) the scientist’ championed by George Kelly and other constructivist psychologists, of human beings as organisms capable of constructing perspectives on their world which can be tested, verified or falsified against it implies a ‘something’ independent of subjective point of view which provides the ground for such testing. Williams and Burden also subscribe to the idea that “people carry out their personal experiments, construct hypotheses and actively seek to confirm them or disconfirm them” (1997, p.27). In relation to what? Here they smuggle in tacit acknowledgement of things in the world independent of individual constructs which constrain their development and are accessible to them. Thus they speak of us reshaping our understanding of the world as we adapt “existing knowledge to new information’ (pp.96, 22). Where they speak of ‘information’, Kelly more straightforwardly spoke of ‘the reality of (the) universe’ providing the testing ground for constructs (Kelly, 1955, p.12). They also speak approvingly of interlanguage theory, “Which holds that a learner’s knowledge of the language is gradually re-shaped as it more closely approximates the target language” (Williams and Burden, 1997, p.23, 66). ‘Approximates’ implies an independent something to be more or less accurately conformed to or matched; an independent something against which our hypotheses are confirmed, disconfirmed and changed. Moreover, what is approximated (and presumably also accessed) is the target language, and not, it would appear, a subjective construction of it.
3. Such approximation is obviously not a matter of solitary interaction between student and language. Drawing upon social interactionist psychologists such as Lev Vygotsky and Reuven Feurstein (Williams and Burden, 1997, pp.38-42, 65-84) Williams and Burden argue that the learning of a language is a socially mediated process. It is mediated by teachers, peers and significant others, who select, organize and present learning materials in what they consider to be optimal ways for appropriation by learners. In line with this interactionist emphasis, Williams and Burden stress the importance of feedback in the learning process (Williams and Burden, 1997, 134-136). They particularly emphasise the importance of feedback providing “information to students that enables them to identify specific aspects of their performance that are acceptable and capable of improvement by some specified means” (Williams and Burden, 1997, p.136).
Yet if the “teaching-learning encounter is, essentially…an encounter between the subjective realities of teacher and pupil” and if knowledge is “transitory, provisional and relative” (Williams and Burden, 1997, p.96) why should the student trust in and be guided by the teacher’s or any other significant other’s feedback? Are their constructs not as equally subjective as the student’s construct? Is their knowledge of the language therefore not just as valid as the teacher’s? What is missing here - but which I think is essential – is some idea of an authority in linguistic usage, in its general meanings, standards and norms. This authority stands independently of the individual perspective of learners or teachers, but it is embodied (albeit fallibly) in teacher or peer corrections, monitoring and feedback. It is these standards and meanings, binding for both teachers and students, which they can refer to in order to correct well, and to progress well.
If we are to overcome all of these inconsistencies and develop a robust constructivism for English language education, we need a more fully rounded account of realities in the language learning environment than that which many constructivists have to offer. And to do that, we must turn to some original philosophical discussions of what reality is. One of the richest understandings of reality can be found in the thought of the 19th century American pragmatist philosopher Charles Peirce.3
2. The Reality of Existing Things and of Meanings
In the course of his philosophical career, Charles Peirce came to write about not one, but two dimensions of reality. One – the one that Piaget (1955) also spoke of - is brute (or almost brute) reality, manifested in existing things that causally resist and constrain our will (Peirce, 1955, pp.79-80, 87-91, Hausman 1993, pp.221-224). Moreover, “the real is something which insists upon forcing its way to recognition as something other than the mind`s creation” (Peirce, 1955, p.79). This reality is in experience, or in what is possibly (but not yet) experienced. Peirce had no place in his philosophy for a real world of things ‘in-themselves’ that is not accessible to experience (Peirce, 1955, pp.299-300). Other people – and their beliefs, expectations and actions – are of course parts of this accessible reality. To give one instance of this, immediately relevant to language learning settings, I may muddle my Japanese verb conjugations in a classroom speaking exercise, believing all the while that I have extemporized in a witty way. But there is nothing like the whispered corrections of a more knowledgeable fellow-student to bring me back down to earth. This is not quite ‘brute’ causality, for inasmuch as I interpret my peer’s correction and acknowledge her right to correct me I am not a wholly passive agent. However, I do experience this interaction as one where my will is constrained by something external to it.
The other dimension of reality is harder to understand, and it was Peirce’s genius amongst modern philosophers that he grasped it. Lev Vygotsky was one of a number of thinkers who came close. As I have already noted, he held that word meanings reflect reality, but unlike sensation or perception, meanings are a ‘generalized reflection of reality’. Vygotsky argued that human communication is conditional upon a stock of meanings which render the world’s goings on into general, comprehensible forms (Vygotsky, 1962). The perspective that I take here from Peirce is a little different; it holds that many (but not all) general ideas, including kinds, types and word meanings, are themselves real. They are not causally effective and they do not exist. However, they are SO independent of and external to our individual whim and thought, “independent of the vagaries of me and you” (Peirce, 1955, p.247). On the other hand, they are not independent of thinking in general, for they have no currency, and no circulation, outside of human linguistic usage (see Peirce, 1955, p.114).4
Generals or meanings are often (but not always) correct symbolizations of the rule-like or habitual tendencies for existing things and events to be what they are, to do what they do in experience (Peirce, 1955, pp.76, 78, 112-115, 220-221). They represent how things are to us, in ways that can be communicated to, shared with and disputed over with others. If there were no generals, we would not be able plot the overall course of future events, nor talk with each other about them; there could be no construing of events in Kelly’s sense of the word (Kelly, 1955, pp.50-52). Generals evolve within human communication but are subject to the constraints of the experienced world, and they are ‘instantiated’ in existing things. That is to say that when things capture our attention, and become subjects of conversation or thought, they articulate to us the repeatable qualities or forms which allow us to make sense of them – and speak of them - as animal or vegetable, as moving at a certain velocity, as solid, red, loveable, boring and so on.5
Now what we say or write about things also exists. Spoken or written words are actual things, but if they are to be intelligible they must be bound by this realm of meanings that holds sway through sustained, popular uptake. Thus, Peirce said of a word such as ‘man’ that, apart from its written and spoken settings, “The word itself has no existence, although it has a real being, consisting in the fact that existents will conform to it” (Peirce, 1955, p.112). The final thing to note is that generals are fixed by common consent and cannot be budged or fooled around with by individual whim. But they do not comprise an immobile, determined reality. Reality is dynamic, for Peirce argued that generals are subject to growth and change (Peirce, 1955, p.115; Hausman, 1993, pp.26-27). For example, word meanings do of course change, or simply drop out of usage, not by dint of individual will but by change in prevailing thought, fashion and custom.
Apply these insights to language learning, and to some constructivist notions of reality as what we ‘make’ in the course of learning a language, and what are the consequences? The learner’s mental map or overall, ‘superordinate’ construct of a language does not constitute the whole reality of that language for her, and she knows that inasmuch as she is striving toward ‘something’ accurate and correct that is so independent of her whim. Still less is that construct something internal and separated from a reality outside. It is an adaptive, creative, ‘localized’ part of reality. It exists, and has causal effect, insofar as it is issues in spoken and written output which influences the thought and actions of others, and through its influence upon the reception and comprehension of input from others. Moreover, it is something that a teacher and peers can come to understand through analysis of the student’s spoken and written output.
It is localized, and it exists in an interdependent relation with the other real constructs that other persons have, within environmental conditions (such as classroom or foreign language communication settings) which sustain, constrain and shape it. In a different sense, it also interacts with the reality of general meanings, and rules for intelligibly ordering meanings, in language. These are the very building blocks for our constructs. Through encounters with causally efficacious aspects of reality such as the reactions of others to our spoken or written utterances in the classroom, we as students are constrained, independently of our will, to accept the ways in which things conventionally have meanings, in which words refer generally to things in some ways and not in others. These causally efficacious aspects are both social and physical. We learn the various meanings of ‘hot’, including its harmful aspects for us, through encounters in which we directly experience hot things, and, at the same time, through the way such experiences are mediated by others. They communicate to us the different, rule-like respects in which ‘hot’ is a sign for something painful, uncomfortable, etc. We respond unreflectively not only to the physical experience of hot things, but also to the significance of the word ‘hot’ as it is communicated to us in different, socially medicated experiences. ‘Hot’ consists of general meanings, but in spoken or written utterance, hot is a ‘thinginess’ that can have causal effect upon its hearer or reader, accordingly as she interprets its implications (‘Don’t touch that! It’s hot!’ ‘It’s hot in here. Can you turn down that heater’, etc).
An important point to remember is that some generals, some meanings are not generally real. They may be fictional because falsified in experience, or they may be somehow idiosyncratic and subjective, dependent on the whim of a particular individual. Language learners provide instances of the latter when they misremember recently acquired lexis. They may then use words that bear a homophonic relation to the intended lexical item, but which are either incomprehensible to their foreign language audience or possess meanings other than that intended. Now from the learner’s subjective viewpoint, such words have general validity and extension, at least prior to correction. And in spoken and written output, they are real, since they are events that have a causal effect on their (bemused) audience. But the words `subjective` and `real` do not add up to mean that these are items of a learner’s ‘subjective reality’. In not having any currency in the community of language users, they are not real in the general sense at all and have no objective standing. There is no ‘subjective reality’ of the language learner counter-posed to the ‘subjective realities’ of skilled or native language speakers. There is rather a realm of objective, real meanings which the latter mediate to the former.6
I have spoken so far of meanings as being general, but the overall rules governing how we combine those meanings into comprehensible utterances also have their own general character. In the Japanese classroom example I discussed above, I may muddle the passive form for ‘eat’ and say something like ‘I was eat by a shark’ (Watashi wa same ni tabemashita). My more learned fellow student’s efforts to correct my addled attempt at humour (‘it’s ‘taberaremashita’!’) are something that I experience as a constraint on my will. But the rule that is embodied and made authoritative in her correction (‘in Japanese base verb forms with ‘e’ endings, the passive conjugation is ‘rareru’) is a different matter. Certainly, it does not exist, it cannot constrain or resist my conduct. Nonetheless, it has general currency, a currency that by definition holds beyond my individual perspective, independently of what I think. I feel bound to respect it, inasmuch as I recognize that, generally or ‘as a rule’, skilled speakers tacitly conform to it, transmit it to others in communication and explicitly uphold it when necessary.7
There is a dependent, receptive aspect to the language learning situation that constructivists sometimes overlook, captivated as they are by ‘man the scientist’ or ‘man the inquirer’ models of learning (Kelly, 1963, p.4; Bannister and Fransella, 1974, p.10). Certainly, experimentation, trial and error practice are integral to how humans – and indeed other organisms – learn about their environments. But we must pay more attention to how aspects of that environment shape and direct such experimentation, and to the ways in which constructions and their elements are socially transmitted and not just individually formulated. We act, but we also undergo, and one of the most important aspects of this undergoing is the reaction of other human beings to our experimentation within our environment – human beings who are of course themselves part of that environment, constituent parts of a reality which we cannot ignore.
The inescapable fact about many of these interactions is that such individuals, by virtue of their greater skill, age, experience and so forth, have assimilated more ideas and meanings than us. We are dependent upon their guidance and instruction to gain access to them. They mediate our access to them by transmitting aspects of them to us in comprehensible, practicable forms. This is a point that Vygotsky made repeatedly. In the course of their mental development human beings appropriate culturally established meanings through interactions with others who are more skilled and knowledgeable. "Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 88). Williams and Burden (1997) also want to acknowledge that “a vital role for both parents and educators is the transmission of culture from one generation to the next” (pp 67-68) but their efforts in this direction are seriously compromised by their adherence to subjectivist notions of knowledge and reality.
My discussion has proceeded at a level of abstraction that may leave some readers irritated. What difference, they might think, do these arcane ideas about reality make to reflective practice? Admit, if only hypothetically that my criticisms of constructivist notions of reality are correct. Admit that the two aspects of reality described above are operative in language classroom interaction – 1) at the level of objective, authoritative meanings, and rules for intelligibly ordering meanings, in a language which students must assimilate; and 2) at the level of experiential constraint in learning, as teachers and more knowledgeable peers embody that authority, and shape and direct a student’s learning process. I argue that acknowledgement of these two factors does make a difference to practice; and I shall proceed to explain how below.
3. A More Realistic Constructivism for Classroom Practice
To bring the claims made above into sharper focus, I want to consider an example taken from EFL classroom practice – one of my classes, as it turns out. A while ago my private English school class of four final year elementary school children encountered third person conjugations of present simple verb tenses for the first time. They had already learned the first, second and third person forms for present continuous tense verbs, and thus were aware that auxiliary verbs vary between first, second and third person sentence forms. They had been experimenting with these new simple present tense forms in class, for example by interviewing each other about their hobbies and then writing down what their partner had said in their writing exercises.
A consistent pattern of error appeared in their initial written homework exercises using these forms. All were tacitly assuming that an auxiliary verb follows third person pronouns in subject-verb formations, as they had learned is the case when writing sentences using present continuous tense forms. On the other hand, they had not yet grasped (not consistently at any rate) that third person singular simple present tense verb forms are conjugated with an ‘s’ or ‘es’. So all four were writing sentences such as ‘she’s play dodgeball’ ‘he’s go to school at 8:00’ and so on, although the frequency of this error varied with each student.
We can imagine that all the students possess a ‘construct’ of tense conjugation that is undergoing continuous development and adjustment. Having assimilated the pattern of third person continuous tense auxiliary verb conjugations, they tacitly assumed that this was the only correct verb pattern that sits well with those mysterious ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’ words and they proceeded to write on this assumption. However, their experimentation was ultimately limited, constrained. It certainly had an effect upon their reader. In Vygotskyan terms, their errors provoked an episode of ‘scaffolding’ as both I and then peers who were ‘in the know’ provided supportive feedback in order to help the other students extend their third person conjugation skills above their present level. I initially hinted at the error in order to help them correct it independently, and progressively became more explicit in highlighting it, asking other students to model the correct form where necessary (see Yu, 2003 for a discussion of Vygotskyan feedback strategies).
Let me consider this situation in light of the three critical points about constructivism made in section 1 above. 1. As the reader will recall, Williams and Burden argue that “each individual constructs his or her own reality and therefore learns different things in different ways even when provided with what seem to be very similar learning experiences” (1997, p.2). Were this true, my English classrooms would resemble nothing so much as towers of Babel, with students struggling to understand their teacher and also struggling to help each other in improving their second language communication skills. If they learn in such different ways, and are locked into their own separate realities and ‘unique experiential worlds’, how can they empathise with each other’s learning difficulties and assist one another? Moreover, with such differentiation in student learning processes, how could teachers discern any general patterns such as in, say, student errors, and think up ways for anticipating them and helping students overcome them?
My own classroom example hardly measures up as an empirical refutation of Williams’ and Burden’s argument. But I do hope that it speaks to the experience of readers who have encountered similar situations in their classes. Yes, there are differences in how students learn, differences in their self-perceptions as learners and differences in their preferred learning strategies that must be taken into account. Williams and Burden emphasize the need for a theory that enables us “to focus upon the uniqueness of individuals as well as helping us to see what they have in common” (1997, p.95) and stress the importance of teachers developing insights into how differently learners perceive their world and their learning processes regarding it.
However, with all this emphasis upon the differences between learners (let alone upon their allegedly separate senses of reality!) it is easy to forget the commonalities, the general patterns in the learning processes, and errors, of English students from the same linguistic background working with the same English as a foreign language school syllabus. If we stress the uniqueness and individuality of each student’s learning processes too much, we will lose sight of how teachers also need to construe their general features, so that they can work out strategies for helping students overcome commonly experienced learning difficulties. We should remember here that from George Kelly’s constructivist perspective, construing is a process involving abstraction and generalizing, as the individual acquires a sense for the replications in the flux of events (Kelly, 1955, pp.50-52, 72-73). In the case of Japanese learners for example, often replicated learning difficulties include problems with third person singular verb conjugations, stress timed pronunciation, pronunciation of double or triple consonant combinations, spelling errors based on transference of consonant-vowel formations from Japanese and so on. To insist so much upon differentiation between individual learner experiences and realities is not only philosophically questionable; it also obscures insight into the shared realities of learning and teaching experiences.
2. I noted, and agreed with Williams’ and Burden’s alignment with interlanguage theory, “Which holds that a learner’s knowledge of the language is gradually re-shaped as it more closely approximates the target language” (1997, p.23, 66). How quickly the dualism between subjective reality and an opaque, objective reality breaks down once we take this assumption seriously. What the students discover and experience, through textbook reading passages, teacher and more skilled peer talk are bits of reality which embody general meanings, habits and rules. They experience these directly and often unreflectively, even though they may not fully comprehend them. Their constructs are more or less successful ways of making sense of and coping with the target language, of integrating it with already possessed knowledge. In my classroom example above, the students erroneously construed third person singular simple present tense conjugations by assimilating them to already learned third person present continuous tense conjugations.
The process by which the students more closely approximated the target language involved experiential constraint. They underwent teacher and peer feedback and corrections, self-corrected or comprehended others` corrective statements, and adjusted their construals accordingly (with their homework exercises improving thereafter). These corrective actions were real events which had a compulsive effect upon students’ conduct. And they had this compulsive effect inasmuch as the students acknowledged the authoritative meanings and rules embodied in feedback and correction. Invoking a dualism between subjective realities and an inaccessible ‘in-itself’ reality in this context makes comprehension of the learning process over-complicated and bizarre. On this view, taken to its logical conclusions, students could never progressively approximate the target language, for it would ultimately be opaque to their constructs of it; and they would experience not the corrections and feedback of their teachers and peers, but their constructions of them.
3. In part one I quoted Williams and Burden as saying that the “teaching-learning encounter is, essentially…an encounter between the subjective realities of teacher and pupil” and that the knowledge fostered in educational settings is “transitory, provisional and relative (1997, p.96). My earlier philosophical criticisms aside, I hope the example from my own classroom experience shows more clearly what is wrong with these assumptions. I hope it also makes clearer how much of what is valuable in Williams’ and Burden’s ideas, especially their discussions of mediation in learning, will be better served by dismissing the subjectivist and dualistic aspects of constructivist thinking. Rather than an encounter between subjective realities, language learning involves structured encounters with the general realities of language, its meanings, and rules and conventions for ordering meanings. Rather than being subjective, the knowledge embodied in those meanings, rules and conventions is objective, holding independently of individual will, but nonetheless subject to change. And finally, the learner’s encounters with the target language are mediated by others such as teachers, native speakers or more skilled peers, who constrain and shape the learning process.
There is room here for some brief remarks on the problem of autonomy in language learning. Williams and Burden stress the importance of mediation working towards greater student self-direction in learning. They distinguish their preferred notion of the teacher as mediator from the traditional notion of the teacher as a ‘disseminator of information’ by stating that teachers as mediators should help learners “to become autonomous, to take control of their learning, with the fundamental aim of enabling them to become independent thinkers and problem-solvers” (1997, p.68). There is a growing post-colonial literature in English language education which criticizes this notion of autonomy as ‘native-speakerist’. Such post-colonial critics argue that the very notion of training learners to be more autonomous in English study involves a tacit affirmation of the superiority of the native speaker teacher’s culture over the learners’ own culture, in which such autonomy is believed to be discouraged (see for example Holliday, 2003, pp.114-117; Williams and Burden are aware of this issue – see 1997, p.161). This argument presents serious challenges for EFL teachers and theorists in countries such as Japan, where there is a standing temptation to dismiss, in simplistic terms, the prevailing education culture for failing to cultivate this trait.
The point I want to make about learner autonomy comes from a different, less political angle. If we drop the philosophically untenable talk of constructs as ‘subjective realities’ as I recommend we do, and adopt an objective, realist view of the meanings and linguistic conventions that students must assimilate in building up their constructs, I believe a more practical idea of student autonomy will result. Autonomy in the sense of self-directed freedom to experiment and solve problems will always be constrained autonomy for learners, in or out of the classroom. As in my own classroom example above, it is constrained by the feedback and corrections of teachers and peers authoritatively mediating foreign language meanings and norms, providing an experiential testing ground for the students` constructs-in-progress. The freedom to experiment and make mistakes is vital for any meaningful, active learning experience. But the very notions of experiment and ‘making mistakes’ make no sense without a social, experiential setting that imposes conditions on experimental success, and which embodies objective norms for distinguishing what is correct from what is in error. On this view, dependence and autonomy are interdependent aspects of any desirable learning process (for further discussion of this interdependent relation, see O’Dwyer 2006).
Conclusion
I have argued that some constructivists have foisted on a notion of reality that is at once too distant and opaque (the real world in-itself) and too subjective (reality as we individually construct it) to be a sound background assumption for reflective teaching practice. I have detailed the inconsistencies that result from accepting it. I have argued instead that the day to day reality for language learners is what they experience in teachers’, native speakers’ or skilled peers’ shaping of their learning processes; and it is in the general meanings and rules of the language they are learning. Language students construct their own local parts of reality, their understandings of a language, in the classroom or in the everyday exchanges where they pick up and practice it. But their autonomy in doing this is constrained by others, and dependence upon them unavoidable. For it is these others –such as teachers and more skilled peers – who mediate to them general meanings and norms in linguistic practice, which are so independently of ‘the vagaries of me or you’.8
Notes
1. Kelly credited the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey as having a strong influence on his thought (see especially Kelly 1955, p.154). But Dewey rejected root and branch the dualism between subjective reality and an objective, opaque reality, arguing that “things –anything, everything, in the ordinary or non-technical usage of the term ‘thing’ - are what they are experienced as” (Dewey 1997 {1910}: p.227).
2. For a clearheaded philosophical analysis of the term ‘real’ - an analysis which inspired the discussion above – see chapter VII of J.L. Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia (Austin 1962, pp.62-78).
3. Charles Peirce (1839-1916) was the elder of the three thinkers regarded as the founders of pragmatism, alongside William James and John Dewey. He is remembered today for his pioneering work in logic and semiotics.
4. The idea that universals or generals are real has an ancient philosophical lineage dating back to Plato. The notion that they are real but do not exist as particular things do is an insight owed to the 13th century scholastic philosopher Duns Scotus.
5. Naturally when things are just dumbly had, savored or suffered they are not so articulate. They are just there, their qualities taken for granted until inquiry or conversation intervene.
6. Of course, some idiosyncratic coinages do become subject to general uptake, and acquire objective status. This is the main source of linguistic innovation. However, language learners are rarely lucky enough to achieve this goal in their second language (though their idiosyncratic usage may find its way as a loanword into their first language).
7. The native or skilled language speaker, responding to a language learner’s complaint about some odd convention in language usage, who says ‘sorry, that’s just the way it is’ is evincing a (somewhat brutal) commitment to the realism discussed above.
8. My thanks are due to Hayashi Hirokazu and David Paul for helping me gain access to a number of books and articles for this paper. I would also like to thank David Paul, two anonymous referees at Asian EFL Journal and the editors at Asian EFL Journal for helpful comments and criticisms of its earlier drafts.
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