The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Many Faces of Constructivism

Across the broad fields of educational theory and research, constructivism has become something akin to a secular religion. In her book Evolution as a Religion (1985), Mary Midgley wrote that the theory of evolution is not just an inert piece of theoretical science. It is, and cannot help being, also a folk-tale about human origins. Any such narrative must have symbolic force (1985, p. 1). She might well have written the same about constructivism, which is, whatever else it may be, a powerful folktale about the origins of human knowledge. As in all living religions, constructivism has many sects-each of which harbors some distrust of its rivals. This descent into