Epistemology: Constructivism: Cognitive Constructivism

Cognitive Constructivism

• Overview:  The fundamental postulate of cognitive constructivism is that reality does not directly reveal itself to us, but rather it is subject to as many alternative ways of construing it as we can invent. In our efforts to anticipate experience each of us develops a coherent system of constructions and attempts to impose them upon the events with which she is confronted.
  
  The constructivists hold that perception or cognition is largely influenced by culture, and the form that takes is shared interpretive schemes and organizational strategies. It says that human action, how we act in the world, is guided by relevant intentions and beliefs produced by our schemes of interpretation; the interpretive schemes suggest alternative lines of action; we then apply action schemes, or strategies.
  
  George Kelly, whose work cognitive constructivism is based on, holds that we have a mechanism for arranging perceptions on the basis or, or by means of, constructs; as we see similar events in similar or different contexts, we are able to construct the similarities and see the differences. We see on the basis of both similarity and difference--otherwise we couldn't really categorize. 
  
  The idea of this perspective is that cognitively we move: 1) toward progressive differentiation into independently organized subsystems, 2) and toward increasing integration of the operations of these subsystems within the system as a whole. This is based in part on 'orthogenetic principle', that all cognitive development proceeds from states of relative globality and undifferentiated structures towards states of increasing differentiation and hierarchical integration of concepts.

More..........................  Cognitive Constructivism: Material & Notes