Constructivist Education in an Age of Accountability

David W. Kritt is Associate Professor of Education at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, USA.

• Section I: Introduction.- 1. Teaching as if children matter.- 2. The place for Dewey’s constructivism of intelligent action in the American meritocracy of Thorndike.- 3. The Confucian concept of learning.- Section II: Engaged Learning for Understanding: STEM Education.- 4. Pedagogic doublethink: Scientific enquiry and the construction of personal knowledge under the English National Curriculum for science.- 5. The practice turn in learning theory and in science education.- 6. How constructivism can boost success in STEM fields for women and minorities.- Section III: Other Literacies.- 7. Reconceptualizing accountability:  The ethical importance of expanding understandings of literacy and assessment for 21st century learners.- 8. Where DAP is due:  Constructing community across difference with the Dialogue Arts Project.- 9. A constructing perspective on games in Education.- Section IV: Social Studies and Social Life.- 10. Social studies, Common Core, and the threat to constructivist education.- 11. Toward a resolution for teacher-student conflict: Crafting spaces of rigorous freedom with classroom debate.- 12. Activity settings as context for motivation:  Reframing classroom motivation as dilemmas within and between activities.- 13. Expeditionary learning, constructivism, and the emotional risks of open-ended inquiry.- Section V: Implications for the future of public education.- 14. Learning, teaching, and social justice:  Eleanor Duckworth’s perspective.- 15. How documentation of practice contributes to construction and reconstruction of an understanding of learning and teaching.- 16. Reimagining research and practice in education.- 17. School learning as compliance or creation.