On the possibility of a realist pedagogical constructivism

Abstract

The discussion about the ability of our intelligence to access reality in itself remains one of the oldest and most exciting questions in philosophy. Piaget reinvented the history of psychology and pedagogy from his scientific discoveries regarding the understanding of the process of knowledge. However, due to his own philosophical inclination, his pedagogical constructivism remained strongly rooted in an immanentist philosophical tradition, to such an extent that the association between pedagogical constructivism and anti-realism constitutes a kind of commonplace and a certain dogmatic assumption. This paper states that this association is not the only possible alternative and that, to a certain extent, it does not even seem to fully respond to the ultimate principles or consequences of Piaget’s constructivist findings. It is possible to justify pedagogical constructivism from realistic positions, as long as we reconsider some assumptions that modernity has installed in educational and philosophical circles in an uncritical way. The revision of the notion of representation, conceived according to the Aristotelian tradition and updated by the contributions of constructivism, allows to find a pathway of reconciliation between pedagogical constructivism and a kind of realism that be, in the words of Charles Taylor, at the same time robust and plural.