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?
•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.
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
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