Meaningful learning: the end of the social and individual constructivist dichotomy?

Abstract

In educational theory, constructivists of various philosophical inclinations are torn between social and individual constructivism and are assumed to be immovable in the apparent irreconcilable disagreement of their epistemes, generating confusion in the interpretation and implementation of constructivism theory. Therefore, this document seeks to reconcile the constructivist, social and individual currents, through the exposition of their common theoretical premise. The method that guided the writing of this article was the contrast between authors and theories through educational reflection and hermeneutics applied to written texts. A total of 30 documents from databases such as Scopus, EBSCO, Scielo and Google Scholar were selected, from which 22 articles of different types were taken to strengthen the theoretical discussion. By doing so, it was found that constructivist theories encompass the construction of both individual and social knowledge, processes that, although derived from different conceptions of cognition and learning, agree in postulating that the learner is the protagonist of his own learning process. It was concluded that meaningful learning represents bond between the individual and social constructivist theories, since it is the common vertex of both currents.