| Chapter | Point | Elements/Tenets |
| Ch. 1. From Constructivism to Critical Constructivism (pp.
1–40) | Point 1. Critical constructivism is grounded on the notion of
constructivism. Constructivism asserts that nothing represents a neutral perspective – nothing exists before consciousness
shapes it into something perceptible (p. 8). | Unified theories Post-positivistic Critical theory A worldview |
| Introducing the Concept: What Are We Talking About?
Critical Hermeneutics
|
Point 2. Knowledge of the world is an interpretation produced by people who are a part of that world. Thus, understanding
the nature of interpretation is a central feature of being an educated person (p. 17).
| Bricolage/ multiple perspectives Ethnography, Historicity, Social change, Dialectics, Semiotics |
|
Critical Constructivism, Context and Complexity
|
Point 3. Interpretations cannot be separated from the interpreter’s location
in the web of reality – one’s interpretive facility involves understanding how historical, social, cultural,
economic, and political contexts construct our perspectives on the world, self and other (p. 24).
|
Complexity theory Epistemology of complexity Consciousness of Complexity |
|
Constructing a Critical System of Meaning |
Point 4. The “critical” in critical constructivism comes from critical
theory and its concern with extending a human’s consciousness of herself as a social being – critical theory
promotes self-reflection in relation to social power and its ability to align our self-perceptions and world views with
the interests of power blocs (p. 33). | “Truth” is contingent Liberation Theology |
| Ch. 2. Power & Knowledge Production; Critical Constructivist
Pedagogical Purpose (pp. 4–80) | Point 5. The key elements of a rigorous education involve understanding
how our consciousness is constructed, subjectivity shaped, and identity produced – here rests the theoretical key
to critical constructivism: the role of power in these processes of self-production and, in turn, epistemology and knowledge
production (p. 41). | Poststructuralist Deconstruction Theoretical Cognitive – Enactivism
Critical Ontology
|
|
Formulation of Educational Purpose | Point 6. In this context [as delineated above] critical constructivists
begin to raise questions about these constructive processes and their relations to power and its influence on the pedagogical
processes – informal cultural pedagogy and formal school pedagogy. Here questions of the purposes of schooling in
a democratic society begin to emerge (p. 60). |
Resists regulation
Purpose Knowledge Base is self-constructed
|
| | | (continued) |
| Table 1. Key Points of Kincheloe’s (2005b)
Critical Constructivist Worldview (cont.) |
| |
| |
| Chapter | Point | Elements/Tenets
|
|
|
| |
| Ch. 3. Epistemology, Ontology and Critical Constructivism’s Struggle Against Reductionism (pp. 81–118) | Point 7. Critical constructivism illustrates how Cartesian epistemology
promotes the notion of the abstract individual – an independent agent free from the constructed influences of the
social, political, cultural, economic, and historical dimensions of the world. The modernist European concept of self cannot
withstand these insights. It is hard in this context to determine where the individual ends and the social begins (p. 81) |
Awareness, Free from machine metaphors; Autopoiesis; Critical Ontology/Historiography; Politics and Power; Self-construct consciousness/New ways of being
|
|
Avoid Technicalization and Simplification |
Point 8. Critical constructivists avoid reductionism and the naïve realism that accompanies it. Critical
constructivist educators make sure that education does not serve as a force that indoctrinates and stupidifies rather than
engages and enlightens (p. 102). | Overcome reductionism and fragmented curriculum |
| Ch. 4. Representing the World: Analyzing the Construction Zone
(pp. 119–142) | Point 9. Critical constructivists assert that understanding the positioning of the researcher in the social web of reality
is essential to the production of rigorous and textured knowledge. As long as researchers and consumers of knowledge do
not understand where they themselves and other researchers stand in this social web, scholars will have a thin and distorted
conception of the research process and the data it produces (p. 119).
| Phenomenology Feminist theory Poststructuralist Analysis Exposure of Power (p. 121) to Construct Voice We can remake ourselves (our consciousness)
|
|
The Construction Process: Discourse, Language, and Power Self-Awareness via the Power of Difference
| Point 10. In the critical constructivist process of reconstructing the self, humans
are ethically required to search in as many locations as possible for unique ideas, alternative discourses, new ways of
thinking and being intelligent, and producing knowledge – the explosive power of difference (p. 124). |
Discourse Analysis
Multiple generative narratives Postcolonial discourses
The Middle Way/Enactivism
Wide applicability
|
| Ch. 5. Blue Knowledge (pp. 143–170) Discursive Analysis |
Point 11. Critical constructivism works to expose elitist assumptions embedded in existing
knowledge. Understanding that dominant power wielders have attempted to hegemonize individuals via the deployment of these
knowledges in political, economic, social, cultural, epistemological and pedagogical structures, many will be uncomfortable
with the exposé process.. | Knowledge to change the world; Non-Western epistemologies Knowledge is tentative, changing; Discourse and context
central dimensions (p.
143) |
| Social
Theoretical Foundations | Point 12. Critical constructivists value subjugated knowledge.
Utilizing the concept of the ‘blues idiom,’ we attempt to expand the concept of subjugated knowledge by drawing
upon African American cultural knowledges. The result is a form of subjugated epistemology called blue knowledge (p. 161). | Includes previously excluded knowledge; Multilogical Pattern-seeking midst chaos |
