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From the verb construct, the techniques and approaches to teaching as well as learning of educational constructivism was established. As construct implies, the learning techniques presented by constructivism involve an organization of structure in which learning abilities are believed to be optimized. Among the earliest proponents of constructivism are the works and teachings of Lao Tzu, Buddha and brilliant philosophers such as Heraclitus, Giambattista Vico, Immanuel Kant and Hans Vaihinger.

Educational constructivism involves five themes  on which its theories are based: the active agency, order, self, social or symbolic relatedness and lifespan development. It claims that humans are experiencing continuously active agency. Virtually all of their activities are devoted to ordering processes or organizational patterning based on tacit or emotional meanings. Hence, constructivists believe that the organization of human activities is self-referent or recursive. However, how do these claims relate to a person’s learning capacities?

To cope with the day-to-day learning of their students, teachers need to implement a focus on the constructive approaches of learning. They even refer to tools such as lesson plans to do that. However, to facilitate effective learning experiences among students, teachers should focus more on what the students should do or will do. Hence, instead of planning their lessons, they should think about what the learners will do instead of their teaching behaviors.

Constructivism is actually a psychological theory that claims that humans learn more or generate knowledge better through their experiences. Its appeal to optimize the learning capacities of students made it an underlying theme of many reforms in teaching methods in education. It operates on the context of behaviorism with emphasis on the effect of intelligence domains and objectives, levels of knowledge and reinforcements to a student’s ability to learn. With the assumption that students construct knowledge better when they interact with their environment, education constructivism was established.

In a constructivist’s design of learning, six important elements were identified: situation, groupings, bridge, questions, exhibit and reflections. These elements must be observed to reflect on the leaning processes of students. A teacher needs to develop a situation where students will be allowed to explain and express their opinions and thoughts regarding a particular lesson. For a situation to be more effective, the teacher may allow his students to form groupings. To build a tighter bridge to learning, the teacher must facilitate activities in which each of the formed groupings can associate with one another and learn what they want to know. A teacher must anticipate questions and answer without giving away explanations, as this will encourage students to exhibit a record of their thinking and share with others. In educational constructivism, a teacher must always solicit the student’s reflections about his learning to be guided in planning and improving his teaching techniques and ability to facilitate learning experiences.

In educational constructivism, the students’ learning processes are defined by embracing their need to reflect on their learning capacities. By actively engaging students in situations that provide them the right exposure to explaining phenomena and resolving problems of formulating questions, they are enabled to construct knowledge through the meanings that they got out of various situations.

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