"Constructivism: From Philosophy to Practice" by Elizabeth Murphy

Here, Murphy provides another view of constructivist perspective. According to her, within a constructivist perspective, knowledge is constructed by individual learners through their interactions with their environment. I think that environment, in this case, may include everything that is related to the physical, social, and cultural surroundings of the learner. In addition these, in a classroom setting, the term environment may also involve various interactions, interpretations, experiences, perspectives, and representations. Very similar to that of Jonassen, Murphy clearly differentiates between constructivist teaching approaches and transmission-type teaching models. Murphy goes on to suggest that "learners actively construct knowledge in their attempts to make sense of their world, then learning will likely emphasize the development of meaning and understanding."

One of the reasons often cited by skeptics of constructivist approach to teaching is that constructivism does not provide a teaching model for classroom implementation. Murphy thinks that this is good news for teachers interested in implementing constructivist approaches. This is primarily because teachers have the flexibility of designing and implementing innovative learning environments, including novel ways of exploiting technological tools and devices.

Before suggesting ways to incorporating technology in the classrooms, Murphy briefly touches on eight different types of constructivism (radical, social, physical, evolutions, postmodern, social, information-processing, and cybernetic systems). Then she goes on to summarizing the characteristics of constructivist learning and teaching as suggested by other researchers in constructivist theory. In addition, she provides a long checklist (18 points) of this theory can be applied to projects, activities, and learning environments

Murphy, E. (1997). Constructivism: From philosophy to practice.