Constructivism

The success of constructivist theories relies on learners not only being engaged in the learning process but having the sole responsibility of constructing knowledge. Learners have free will to “choose their adventure” and they make these choices based on the knowledge being relevant or useful to their individual needs (Bates, 2022). The general belief of constructivism is that learners first complete an action, as in hands-on learning or application, then reflect on their experiences to construct knowledge (Kimmons, 2022). Dewey’s theory of experiential education states that learners who engage in real-world activities using problem-solving prompts sustained by inquiry achieve higher levels of learning (Kimmons, 2022). Reflection is a key step in constructing knowledge by connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge. 

This is the theory that fuels the creative design process—a client has a problem that a visual design product has to solve and a designer exercises agency in six stages of the process to deliver a product that communicates the message the client wants to send. The stages are, alliteratively:

1. define (social interaction with expert to understand the challenge);
2. discover (research client’s industry and audience);
3. design (research dump in word webs, connect ideas, sketch visual representations of the ideas);
4. develop (social interactions for peer critique and client iterations);
5. deliver (final product for real-world implementation);
6. debrief (reflection on experience, process, outcome).

While the motivations may vary from one designer to the next—an intrinsic sense of accomplishment, an external reward of payment, or seeing your poster hang in the set design of a television sitcom—the process is the same and the goal is to deliver a final product as agreed upon.  

In the same way a designer invests time learning and researching a client to make informed design decisions, so must an instructional designer (ID) invest time in identifying and understanding the learners for whom they are designing curricula. When operating under a constructivist theory, the ID has to understand their role as a facilitator—one who prompts, guides, observes expertly, and maintains the bridge between what the learner can do independently and what the learner can achieve with guidance.  Language is an important gateway that invites the learner to engage. An ID would have to choose language that immediately connects with the learner to establish relevance. For example, Nickelodeon launched a children’s program about elementary-aged animal characters having imaginative adventures in their backyards. What got my attention most about the program as I passively listened when my daughter watched the show were the characters’ names—specifically Tyrone, Uniqua, and Tasha—because these names were far more common among African American communities and rarely used in mainstream programs for children. While it may seem small, those three names promoted intrinsic motivation by using language to represent or recall a cultural experience (Pappas, 2015). As a result, I gave the show more of my attention to discover the characters were doing the same things I did with my friends as a child.     

Responsibility of Learners in Social Interactions

Even though constructivism supports full learner autonomy, the learner still has responsibilities in social interactions with their peer group and more knowledgeable other (MKO) (Kimmons, 2022).  Cooperative learning is a constructivist strategy in which students learn from their peers through transactive reciprocal dialogue (McLeod, 2024). Learners must actively engage in social interactions for collective advancement. One of the pitfalls that can occur when students are unequally engaged is a dominant perspective that won’t be subject to alternative viewpoints or challenges. IDs have to set ground rules for cooperative learning activities that establish value in the difference of opinions and codes of conduct for exchanging points of view. 

Role of Instructors as Facilitators 

Teachers as “facilitators” of the learning means their role is to prompt the learner to discover knowledge (McLeod, 2024). The teacher scatters breadcrumbs and meets each learner wherever they stop to pick one up. The goal is to get all learners to construct their own understanding, however, the path by which they achieve this is very much their own. The teacher’s role is to observe and redirect when called upon for guidance and offer guidance when overwhelm is detected. This requires a significant amount of time to observe each learner and allow the learning to take place by discovery. Unfortunately, our educational and assessment systems in America never seem to have enough time allotted for this type of mastery. Constructivism requires teachers to group students strategically during cooperative learning to promote transactive dialogue. It is the teacher’s responsibility to know their students well enough to make these groupings conducive to co-constructing knowledge.

If a learner takes the lead role in achieving their learning goal, IDs have to consider individual motivating factors that fuel learner behavior and engagement. Vygotsky recognizes two types of motivation in the ZPD and they are intrinsic and extrinsic. In my first read, I interpreted these to be a synthesis of what cognitivism and behaviorism theories believed, respectively. Intrinsic motivations are fueled by curiosity, interest, and conviction (cognitive influences) whereas extrinsic motivations are fueled by reward, praise, or fear of consequences (external stimuli). Between the two types of motivation, one is not better than the other if the learner completes a task to a behaviorist. The differences between the two motivations are cognitive processes that determine the permanence of constructed knowledge in the experience. Extrinsic motivations don’t usually sustain interest (McLeod, 2023), so IDs should incorporate the “4 C’s”—challenge, curiosity, control, and contextualized learning—to develop intrinsic motivations that lead to optimal knowledge retention and deeper learning (McLeod, 2023).

Every minute is precious to a solopreneur whose money is often tied to where they spend the most time which means every minute invested in a coaching program has to return value. This is a strength when the solopreneur’s motivations are mostly intrinsic. Here’s what I mean:

Scenario A: Suzie Q is a successful event planner who made a name for herself in wedding planning markets. She no longer wants to plan weddings, she wants to build up her corporate event planning portfolio. She seeks out a brand coach to help her navigate the brand transition and she’s self-motivated to transfer her organizational and coordination skills from weddings to larger-scale corporate events. 

As a coach, I would first have to devise a system of information capture to learn about where she is currently and where she wants to be. An intake survey and brief consultation would help me get to know Suzie Q as a learner. I can use that information to tailor a program to facilitate her progression through the ZPD. The more I understand her strengths, brand challenges, and desired outcomes, the more likely I am to devise a coaching program that leverages the ARCS model for engagement: captures her attention; is relevant to her experience; builds confidence through real-world application; and offers immediate satisfaction through social feedback. 

Attention + Relevance

By observing successful strategies implemented by other companies, I can challenge solopreneurs to adapt a strategy for their needs and evaluate its success in real time (McLeod, 2024). We can look at strategies implemented across multimedia formats so the learner can choose the format that works best for their capacity. This level of adaptation requires them to evaluate a success model, extract strategies they can tailor for their operation, and implement immediately. One consideration of constructivism that may hinder learning in this context is the amount of time needed to observe the success of a brand strategy. For example, a client’s engagement may not increase overnight but requires consistency over time before passive scrollers convert to consumers. Communicating objectives up-front and offering a framework for qualifying success should help manage learner expectations.

Confidence + Satisfaction

If Suzie Q started applying strategies she learned from a coaching session, the feedback would be immediate due to the immediate nature of social media. Likes, shares, reactions, reposts, and comments are all means of immediate feedback. Suzie Q may be satisfied if the feedback is generally positive, and if her motivations are intrinsic, she may have enough resilience to recover from negative feedback. However, if she receives negative feedback and her motivations are extrinsic, her confidence might dip. Quick implementations are good for me as a coach because they create opportunities for rejection or unexpected results, raising new questions and creating new opportunities for deeper understanding and analysis. Design sprints are “fail fast” environments because the faster you fail, the sooner you develop new and improved ideas. As the ZPD facilitator, I standby for the right moment to intervene so that negative or unexpected feedback doesn’t take her out of the ZPD. My role is to scaffold or create collaborative learning spaces where she gets reinforcement from her peers with similar experiences. Constructivism leverages transactive dialogue between peers for co-creation of knowledge through shared ideas, experiences, and practices that help everyone succeed. This is the strength of business accelerator cohorts. Instead of classifying this peer group by age or brain capacity, peer groups in this context share common experiences as solopreneurs. Peer groups can be established using other common grounds, such as gender (woman-owned businesses), ethnicity (latino-owned business), age (40 under 40 business owners), industry (software developers), etc.