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George Kelly (1905-1967)

Personal Construct Theory

Personal construct:
•The pattern of man’s construction are called constructs; and, since each
person sets up his own network of pathways leading into the future, the
concern of the psychologist is the study of personal constructs.(Kelly,1955)
•To understand someone else is to understand his personal construct
system (Duck, 1983)
Basics of the theory

•Metaphor of Man-as-scientist
•Constructive alternativism–we continuously construe our surrounding
reality.
•Anticipation –we are always trying to anticipate /foresee what will
happen ≠response
•If the construct, when tested, anticipates the right outcome the
hypothesis holds and thus the personal theory or construct system
about surrounding phenomena holds.
•Man/woman is always looking for personal theories that can better
differentiate and anticipate events in the world.
What is a personal costruct?

•A construct is defined not as an event, but how we construe the event.


Thus a construct is the meaning we give to our surrounding reality.
•We create an image of reality and then we respond to this image.

•Personal constructs are then tested against reality.

• Personal constructs are cognitive structures we use to interpret &


predict events.

•No 2 people use identical personal constructs, & no 2 people organize


their constructs in an identical manner.
•According to Kelly, personal constructs are bipolar.
• That is, we classify relevant objects in an either/or fashion with each
construct.
•E.g., friendly-unfriendly, tall-short, intelligent-stupid, masculine-feminine,
etc.
•After applying the original black-and-white construct we can use other
bipolar constructs to determine the extent of blackness or whiteness.
•E.g., If you think a person is intelligent, you may then apply the construct,
“academically intelligent or commonsense intelligent.” --provides a clearer
picture!
How can personal constructs be used to explain personality differences?

•Kelly argued that differences in our behavior largely result from differences
in the way people “construe the world.”
•Suppose two people meet a new individual named Adam.
•Person 1: uses friendly-unfriendly, fun loving-stuffy, and outgoing-shy
constructs in forming his template for Adam’s behavior.
Person 2: uses refined-gross, sensitive-insensitive, & intelligent-stupid
constructs.
•After both individuals interact with Adam they walk away with different
impressions of Adam.
•Person 1 believes that Adam is a friendly, fun-loving & outgoing person,
whereas Person 2 thinks that Adam is gross, insensitive, & stupid.
•The same situation is interpreted differently.

Past experience—guides our predictions


We use past experience to determine what is important to attend to &
what we can ignore.
If you knew if a person was quiet or talkative (talkative-quiet construct),
you could predict their behavior in a given situation more accurately.
Why do two people who experience the same event, have different
interpretations of that event?
•1. Each person may have a different set of constructs they use to
evaluate a given event.
•2. Two people may use similar constructs on one pole, but not on the
other.
• E.g., You might use an outgoing-reserved construct, whereas you
might use an outgoing-melancholy construct. Thus, what you see as
reserved, I may see as melancholy.
•.A subordinate construct may be subsumed within one side of the
superordinate construct, like this:

Friendly-Unfriendly

Outgoing-Quiet
Here, people are judged as either friendly or unfriendly. If judged
as friendly, they are then judged as either outgoing or quiet.
You might, however organize your constructs this way:
 
Friendly-Unfriendly
Outgoing-Quiet Outgoing-Quiet

Here, whether you judge people as friendly or unfriendly, you can


further judge them as either outgoing or quiet.
The theory is set out in his major work as a series of formal
postulates and corollaries, but its essence is that personal identity is
defined by the way we construe or “understand” our personal worlds.
It is therefore a phenomenological approach, rather than a positivist
one. All action and thinking is undertaken, PCP maintains, in a
“scientific” manner. This basically means trying things out to see
whether they work: our “constructs” or ways of making sense of the
world, are not necessarily conscious and articulate, but may be
inferred from behaviour. Kelly does not refer to learning at all, but
to changes in constructs over time — but this is principally because
the process of learning is so ubiquitous in the system.
Its major tool is the “Repertory Grid”, which is an amazingly ingenious
and simple idiographic device to explore how people experience their
world. It is a table in which, apart from the outer two columns, the
other columns are headed by the names of objects or people
(traditionally up to 21 of them). These names are also written on cards,
which the tester shows to the subject in groups of three, always asking
the same question: “How are two of these similar and the third one
different?”  
The answer constitutes a “construct”, one of the dimensions along
which the subject divides up her or his world. Some constructs, such
as “male” and “female” (when applied to people) are too commonplace
to be of much interest (although the question why they matter in
this particular case may well be interesting), but it is the personal
constructs which say a lot about the person. If, for example, the
names (or “elements”) were cars, then the “male-female” construct
might be much more revealing. There are conventions for keeping
track of the constructs. When the grid is complete, there are
several ways of rating or ranking all of the elements against all the
constructs, so as to permit sophisticated analysis of core constructs
and underlying factors (see Bannister and Mair, 1968) 
Constructs do not have to be dictionary opposites: for a given subject
“Unselfish” might be a more meaningful opposite to “Mean”, than
“Generous”. It is connotations for an individual which count, rather than
"objective" dictionary denotations. For this reason you need to exercise
great caution in comparing the grids of different people.
The number of constructs generated before the subject begins to
repeat them can be revealing. 24—30 is about the norm. People with
obsessional traits (“one-track minds”) may generate far fewer:
schizophrenics far more. The tester can deliberately deal combinations
of the cards to test hypotheses, or get the subject to rank all the items
from one pole to another: the resulting scores are amenable to
statistical processing to get at the major construct families. Or the
tester can ask “why?” the subject has developed a construct: the
resulting explanation gets at the “superordinate” constructs, which are
hierarchically organised.
Role Construct Repertory Test
Assessment evokes personal construct system
Person’s understanding of personality emerges through making
comparisons
Comparison of triads to get hierarchy of constructs used for
understanding and predicting behavior
Personal construct theory gives one of the richest possible
accounts of a person's cognitive processes, and has been
developed as a tool in “conversational" models of learning.
Kelly formally developed his theory through a series of corollaries
, which can be broadly grouped into those concerned with the
process of construing, the structure of personal knowledge, and
the social embeddedness of our construing efforts.
Kelly: "(The fundamental postulate) is ... elaborated by means of
eleven corollaries. These, also, are assumptive in nature, and they
lay the groundwork for most of what follows." (1955/1991, Vol. 2, 
p. 4/1991)
1-The construction corollary
Kelly: "A person anticipates events by construing their
replications" (1955/1991, Vol. 2,  p. 4/1991)
2- The individuality corollary
Kelly: "Persons differ from each other in their construction of
events" (1955/1991, Vol. 2,  p. 4/1991)
3-The organisation corollary
Kelly: "Each person characteristically evolves for his
convenience in anticipating events, a construction system
embracing ordinal relationships between constructs"
(1955/1991, Vol. 2,  p. 5/1991)
4-The dichotomy corollary
Kelly: "A person's construction system is composed of a finite
number of dichotomous constructs" (1955/1991, Vol. 2,  p.
5/1991)
6-The range corollary
Kelly: "A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a finite range
of events only" (1955/1991, Vol. 2,  p. 5/1991)
7- The experience corollary
Kelly: "A person's construction system varies as he successively
construes the replication of events" (1955/1991, Vol. 2,  p. 5/1991)
8-The modulation corollary
Kelly: "The variation in a person's construction system is limited by
the permeability of the constructs within whose ranges of
convenience the variants lie" (1955/1991, Vol. 2,  p. 5/1991)
9-The fragmentation corollary
Kelly: "A person may successively employ a variety of construction
subsystems which are inferentially incompatible with each other"
(1955/1991, Vol. 2,  p. 5/1991)
11-The sociality corollary
Kelly: "To the extent that one person construes the
construction processes of another he may play a role in a social
process involving the other person" (1955/1991, Vol. 2,  p.
5/1991)

Personal Construct Theory or Constructivism: People construe


or understand the world and construct own versions of
reality-personal system of explaining human behaviors
Each of us tries to understand the world and we do so in ways
that are different
A person’s processes are psychologically channeled by ways in
which he anticipates events
Every man is, in his own particular way, a scientist
Definition

Constructivism is first of all a theory of learning based on the


idea that knowledge is constructed by the knower based on
mental activity. Learners are considered to be active
organisms seeking meaning. Constructivism is founded on the
premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, we construct
our own understanding of the world consciously we live in. Each
of us generates our own "rules" and "mental models," which we
use to make sense of our experiences. Learning, therefore, is
simply the process of adjusting our mental models to
accommodate new experiences. Constructions of meaning may
initially bear little relationship to reality (as in the naive
theories of children), but will become increasing more
complex, differentiated and realistic as time goes on.
Guiding principles of constructivism

1. The premisses of constructivism as epistemology are defined as


follows:
2. Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted.

3. Prior knowledge impacts the learning process.

4. Initial understanding is local, not global.

5. Building useful knowledge structures requires effortful and


purposeful activity.
How Constructivism Impacts Learning

Constructivist learning theory does not necessarily imply that one


must follow a "constructivist" pedagogical strategy. In other words,
most researches firmly believe that knowledge is constructed, but
some (e.g. main stream instructional designers) do not adopt an
instructional design that is labelled "constructivist".
Typically, a constructivist teaching strategy is based on the belief
that students learn best when they gain knowledge through
exploration and active learning. Hands-on materials are used instead
of textbooks, and students are encouraged to think and explain
their reasoning instead of memorizing and reciting facts. Education
is centered on themes and concepts and the connections between
them, rather than isolated information.
Instruction : Under the theory of constructivism, educators focus on
making connections between facts and fostering new understanding in
students. Instructors tailor their teaching strategies to student
responses and encourage students to analyze, interpret, and predict
information. Teachers also rely heavily on open-ended questions and
promote extensive dialogue among students.
Assessment : Constructivism calls for the elimination of grades and
standardized testing. Instead, assessment becomes part of the learning
process so that students play a larger role in judging their own progress.
Faces Of Constructivism

Dougiamas (1998) describes the major "faces of constructivism"


separately. Each of these types of constructivism are "points of
view", perspectives loosely defined by a collection of writings of
particular individuals in each case. These sections represent popular
labels in constructivist literature used as shorthand to indicate these
different groups of ideas.
Trivial constructivism

The simplest idea in constructivism, root of all the other shades of


constructivism described below, is trivial constructivism(von
Glasersfeld, 1990), or personal constructivism or cognitive
constructivism.

The principle has been credited to Jean Piaget, a pioneer of


constructivist thought, and can be summed up by the following
statement:
 
Knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, not passively
received from the environment
One of the most enduring aspects of Piaget’s work has been his
emphasis on the constructive nature of the learning process.In
contrast to more traditional views whish see learning as the
accumulation of facts or the development of skills, the main assumption
of constructivism is that individuals are actively involved right from
birth in constructing personal meaning, that is their own prsonal
understanding,from their experiences.In other words ,everyone makes
their own sense of the world and the experiences that surround
them.In this way the learner is brought into central focus in learning
theory.
Piaget himself was mainly interested in the way in which people came
to know things as they developed from infancy to adulthood.Thus,his
theory is one which is action based,more concerned with the process
of learning than what is learned .It suggests that we “come to know
“things as a direct result of our experiences,but that we make sense of
those experiences at different stages of life.
Impact of Piaget

•Understanding unfolds in logical order


•New cognitions build on older cognitions
•Good teachers do not directly teach or reinforce-but guide learners to
their own discoveries
•Distinctive view of human nature
As an advocate of Piaget’s ideas, Jerome Bruner’s theory leads to
constructivist approaches to teaching especially by its strong support
of discovery approaches. Learning through discovery requires the
learner to construct information by discovering the relationships that
exist among concepts and principles.
Bruner advances some specific recommendations and observations that
are especially important for the constructivist, discovery oriented
classroom.
Radical constructivism

Radical constructivism adds a second principle to trivial


constructivism (von Glasersfeld, 1990), which can be expressed as:
  Coming to know is a process of dynamic adaptation towards viable
interpretations of experience. The knower does not necessarily
construct knowledge of a "real" world.
 
 
. Radical constructivism does not deny an objective reality, but
simply states that we have no way of knowing what that reality
might be. Mental constructs, constructed from past experience,
help to impose order on one's flow of continuing experience.
However, when they fail to work, because of external or internal
constraints, thus causing a problem, the constructs change to try
and accommodate the new experience. The emphasis here is still
clearly on the individual learner as a constructor.
Neither trivial nor radical constructivism look closely at
the extent to which the human environment affects
learning: it is regarded as part of the total environment.
These issues are focussed on in more detail by social,
cultural and critical constructivism.
Social constructivism or Socio-Constructivism

The social world of a learner includes the people that directly affect that
person, including teachers, friends, students, administrators, and
participants in all forms of activity. Teaching strategies using social
constructivism as a referent include teaching in contexts that might be
personally meaningful to students, negotiating taken-as-shared meanings with
students, class discussion, small-group collaboration, and valuing meaningful
activity over correct answers (Wood et al, 1995).
Cultural constructivism

Beyond the immediate social environment of a learning situation are the


wider context of cultural influences, including custom, religion, biology,
tools and language. For example, the format of books can affect learning,
by promoting views about the organisation, accessibility and status of the
information they contain.
 
"[What we need] is a new conception of the mind, not as an individual
information processor, but as a biological, developing system that exists
equally well within an individual brain and in the tools, artefacts, and
symbolic systems used to facilitate social and cultural interaction."
(Vosniadou, 1996)
The tools that we use affect the way we think (by tools, language and
other symbolic systems as well as physical tools are included). Salomon
and Perkins, (1998) identify two effects of tools on the learning mind.
Firstly, they redistribute the cognitive load of a task between people and
the tool while being used. For example, a label can save long explanations,
and using a telephone can change the nature of a conversation. Secondly,
the use of a tool can affect the mind beyond actual use, by changing
skills, perspectives and ways of representing the world. For example,
computers carry an entire philosophy of knowledge construction, symbol
manipulation, design and exploration, which, if used in schools, can
subversively promote changes in curricula, assessment, and other changes
in teaching and learning.
Critical constructivism

Critical constructivism looks at constructivism within a social and cultural


environment, but adds a critical dimension aimed at reforming these
environments in order to improve the success of constructivism applied as a
referent.
Jurgen Habermas to help make disempowering cultural myths more visible,
and hence more open to question through conversation and critical self-
reflection knowledge construction and serves as a referent for cultural
reform. It confirms the relativism of radical constructivism, and also
identifies the learner as being suspended in semiotic systems similar to
those earlier identified in social and cultural constructivism. To these,
critical constructivism adds a greater emphasis on the actions for change
epistemology that addresses the socio-cultural context of Taylor (1996)
describes critical constructivism as a social of a learning teacher. It is a
framework using the critical theory of potentially.
Constructivist pedagogical theory

Constructivism is a way of thinking about knowing, a referent for


building models of teaching, learning and curriculum (Tobin and Tippin,
1993). In this sense it is a learning philosophy and it may also become a
teaching philosophy.
Some common tenets
Learning is a search for meaning. Therefore, learning must start with
the issues around which students are actively trying to construct
meaning.
Meaning requires understanding wholes as well as parts. And parts must
be understood in the context of wholes. Therefore, the learning
process focuses on primary concepts, not isolated facts.
In order to teach well, we must understand the mental models that
students use to perceive the world and the assumptions they make to
support those models.
The purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her own
meaning, not just memorize the "right" answers and regurgitate someone
else's meaning. Since education is inherently interdisciplinary, the only
valuable way to measure learning is to make the assessment part of the
learning process, ensuring it provides students with information on the
quality of their learning.
Constructivism also can be used to indicate a theory of communication.
When you send a message by saying something or providing information,
and you have no knowledge of the receiver, then you have no idea as to
what message was received, and you can not unambiguously interpret the
response.
Viewed in this way, teaching becomes the establishment and
maintenance of a language and a means of communication between the
teacher and students, as well as between students. Simply presenting
material, giving out problems, and accepting answers back is not a
refined enough process of communication for efficient learning. Some
of the tenets of constructivism in pedagogical terms:
Students come to class with an established world-view, formed by years
of prior experience and learning.
Even as it evolves, a student's world-view filters all experiences and
affects their interpretation of observations.
For students to change their world-view requires work.
Students learn from each other as well as the teacher.
Students learn better by doing.
Allowing and creating opportunities for all to have a voice promotes the
construction of new ideas.
A constructivist perspective views learners as actively engaged in
making meaning, and teaching with that approach looks for what
students can analyse, investigate, collaborate, share, build and
generate based on what they already know, rather than what facts,
skills, and processes they can parrot. To do this effectively, a teacher
needs to be a learner and a researcher, to strive for greater awareness
of the environments and the participants in a given teaching situation in
order to continually adjust their actions to engage students in learning,
using constructivism as a referent.
Constructivist learning environments

Most educational technologists that adopt some kind of constructivist


stance also believes in collaborative learning, construction and that
learning is siutated.
E.g. Jonassen and Land (2002) suggests three cornerstones for
constructivist learning environments:
•Context
•Construction
•Collaboration.
This minimal set can be expanded, e.g. in Marcelo Milrad's (2002)
Instructional design model for interactive learning environments (ILEs),
we find the following elements and that can be enhanced with technology.
•Authentic activities: presenting authentic tasks that
conceptualise rather than abstract information and provide
real-world, case-based contexts, rather than pre-determined
instructional sequences.
•Construction: learners should be constructing artefacts and
sharing them with their community;
•Collaboration: to support collaborative construction of
knowledge through social negotiation, as opposed to
competition among learners for recognition;
•Reflection: fostering reflective practice;
•Situating the context: enables context and content
dependent knowledge construction; and,
•Multi-modal interaction: providing multiple representations of
reality, representing the natural complexity of the real world.
Constructivist learning environments can be distinguished from
behaviorist designs, but within distinctions may become quite subtle. As
a more clearcut example we cite Hay and Barab's distinction of
apprenticeship and constructionist learning environments: “ In the end,
we believe the differences lie in whether the learning environment has a
community-centered focus or a learner-centered one. Both
environments share authenticity of practices and goals, ownership of
the environment by the learners, and a focus on project outcomes
rather than tests. Community-centered environments focus on imparting
fixed community practices, and learners are engaged in activities with
well-defined goals and subgoals. The definition of success, for the
learner, is becoming a community member, and the mentors are invested
both in learner development and the quality of the outcome.Learner-
centered environments focus on learners' developing emergent skills,
where goals are ill defined, where the success is the development of a
high-quality product, and where mentors are facilitators, but do not
have added investment in the quality of their product.” (Hay and
Barab:318).

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