Studying constructivist principles to apply within virtual spaces
Text by Max Frühwirt
Discussing knowledge dissemination strategies often leads to the question of how to boost both user engagement and knowledge retention. When transferring knowledge in a museum environment, where the visitor may not always be able to ask for information, clear and concise transfer of the presented knowledge is paramount. A virtual museum, such as the one developed to display parts of the Skušek collection thereby has a variety of ways to respond to the challenge of how to engage the user and make sure the presented knowledge gets understood and memorised. One such way is the application of constructionist and social-constructionist principles and their ideologically adjacent established theories to any educational media to create a meaningful learning experience. When doing so, one will need to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of applying such principles as well as its limitations. For this reason, this blog post will give a brief overview over constructivist theory and its inherent and adjacent sub-theories as well as try to provide an understanding, of the challenges one may face when applying them in any educational setting.
Constructivism and related fields, Illustration © Max Frühwirt 2025
What is Constructivism?
Defining the exact boundaries of Constructivism is more than difficult, as is narrowing down all its exact origins and historic influences. While some would call it a simple number of educational principles, view it as one of the leading theoretical positions of educational practice or call it a theory of knowledge or learning, others would consider it a theory of pedagogy, theory of science or even holistic world-view. In the same vein, it has been linked to a wide variety of practices across history. At the earliest, during the times of Socrates, it was believed teachers and learners should engage in communication to interpret and construct new knowledge. A much more recent example that pre-dates modern Constructivism is Immanuel Kant’s 18th century proposition that knowledge is created by the mind as a secondary effect of humans being unable to directly appraise and discern reality objectively, but rather having to organise and interpret sensory information via a wide variety of mental processes. Furthermore, John Dewey may also be seen as a predecessor heralding the modern Constructivist movement with his arguments against education being the simple learning of facts rather than the development of reflective skills as well as critical and autonomous thinking in the early 20th century.
It is thus very difficult to set an exact boundary of what is Constructivism, however, it has widely been understood in academia as a synthesis of multiple psychological and pedagogical theories, behaviourist and cognitive ideals into on form. While said form can still be divided into the two major perspectives of 1) cognitive / personal constructivism and 2) social constructivism, they still follow a common principal idea, first expressed by Hoover (1969). According to him and constructivism in general, knowledge creation and learning is a process of constructing meaning and interpretation. Learners thereby construct new understandings using their existing knowledge. Learning is thereby not passive, it is the active process of how people make sense of their experience, both on an individual and on a social level.
Likewise, the two founding fathers of the two main strands of modern constructivist principles are widely agreed upon to be Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1977) and Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1986).
Cognitive vs Social Constructivism – Piaget vs Vygotsky
Piaget, who is considered the father of Cognitive Constructivism, paved the way for modern Constructivism by establishing his theory, that learning does not occur passively, but rather is the active process of constructing meaning from new information. He suggests that exploration and discovery is the most important aspect of learning, as it builds the basis for all following knowledge development. The learner, so Piaget claims, thereby, when encountering a situation that challenges their existing way of thinking, has to make sense of the newly acquired information by attempting to associating it with what they already know, thus assimilating it into their pool of knowledge and internalising it. Should association be impossible, they have to accommodate the new knowledge by restructuring their present beliefs to a higher different level of thinking.
Vygotsky, on the other hand, takes a very critical stance on Piaget’s work and his contribution to Constructivist theory. He believes, that Piaget focuses too much on the internal processes of the individual and completely leaves out external factors, such as cultural, historical or social interaction within a community, which he suggests as the primary factor of personal knowledge development. According to him and his Socio-constructivist perspective, understanding, significance and meaning are first developed jointly via human interaction, so rather than knowledge being dependent on the individual, the process of knowledge generation is affected by other people and mediated by the surrounding community and culture. Cognitive growth therefore first occurs on a social level. Language thereby plays an important role for humans to construct their cognitive collective reality with. To exchange knowledge and advance knowledge growth within the community, his theory explains the concept of a zone of proximal development (ZPD), featuring a “more knowledgeable other”, basically a more advanced peer than the learner in their current field, who may guide the learner and act as a facilitator within the community.
While Piaget’s view places the learner’s personal development as the first step that precedes internalisation, Vygostsky believes the opposite, that knowledge is first created in a social setting, before being internalised.
To summarise, their positions and theories can be explained as follows:
Constructivist theories by Piaget and Vygotsky, Illustration © Max Frühwirt 2025
The issue of Subjectivity vs. Objectivity: Constructivism vs. Cartesian Dualism
One of the core challenges when discussing constructivism also comes from its greatest strength: By emphasizing subjective experiences it runs the risk of an erosion of objectivity and give rise to relativism, where every truth is considered valid. This creates a tension between subjective experience and objective reality however, and it runs counter to René Descartes’ 17th century theory of Cartesian dualism. Descartes believed that by separating mind from body, the mind as a rational entity would become capable of understanding objective truths. By separating itself from the shackles of sensory, the mind could generate knowledge, new understandings and personal development through the use of reason alone. His famous quote “I think, therefore I am” also encapsulates that belief.
Descartes clear emphasis of treating the mind as a separate entity from any other sensory experience, however, leaves a clear gap between objective reality and a person’s subjective perception of it. As a result, Constructivism emerged also partly as a reaction to this tension created by Cartesian objectivism, as knowledge within any individual or society is not purely objective, but also constructed through subjective experience, interpretation and bias.
Nowhere is this topic more prevalent and becomes more apparent than in the emphasis on individual perspectives in modern (social) media, where episodic thinking, personal narratives and alternative truths oftentimes trumps evidence-based, objective analysis. Influencers thereby employ episodic thinking to shape discourse with and influence their audience by leveraging the emotional resonance of personal experiences. As a result, their success acting as an appeal to authority, they open the discourse to alternative realities, reinforcing the idea that expertise can come from lived experience rather than formal education and empirical evidence. This phenomenon is amplified by algorithms creating echo chambers, where individuals reinforce each other’s views. As a result, personal experience and cognitive biases start shaping public sentiment, which one the one hand democratises discourse, but also opens the door to misinformation, societal polarisation and erodes critical thinking. The constructivist principle of emphasising subjectivity thus risks downplaying objectivity and verifiable facts by viewing all truths as relative and equally valid, leading to relativism.
An insight into Constructivism in Educational Practice
To mitigate these effects, and due to the previously described differences in perspectives on constructivist theory and its complexities and challenges when it comes to objective knowledge, a variety of approaches are known today. Their main advantages are that, among other things, they may:
– boost critical thinking
– improve media literacy
– promote fact checking
– foster critical awareness
– encourage discourse
– safeguard the role of objective truth and
– balance individual experience and objective reality
Cook’s and Bruner’s (1992) advocacy of negotiation in the curriculum, where learners negotiate, ask questions and try to find answers themselves may not only make information more meaningful to them, but also invite them to contribute. Doing so encourages real investment into their material, which both forces them to make explicit their goal, confront any new information critically and take ownership for their work. This, in turn, can also lead to an increased commitment to learning, as it becomes more of a personal experience, while still fostering discourse and critical awareness.
Twomey Fosnot (1989) suggests four principles to define constructivist learning:
1) Learning depends on an individual’s previous knowledge
2) New ideas occur through adaptation and challenging of previous ideas
3) Learning involves active invention of ideas rather than simple accumulation of facts
4) Meaningful learning can only be achieved by rethinking old ideas and coming to new conclusions when provided with new evidence
These principles, in which the learner is open to modification of held beliefs, also align with a more balanced approach between subjectivity and objectivity. It does not necessarily reject the existence of an objective reality, instead it argues that reality can place constraints on the individual interpretation of experiences and that all knowledge that is internalised is subjective to a certain degree.
Christie (2005) further adds, that the active process of learning in constructivist theory can be used to emphasize the building of problem-solving skills and understanding rather than simple fact retention.
Finally, Hariyati et. al. (2025) also showcases, that constructivist principles, while running danger of falling prey to exploitation in modern media, can, on the flip side, also be used to increase media literacy and critical engagement with content.
Application of constructivist theory in digital media, extended reality and museology
While Hare (2005) stated, that technological advancements have great potentials for more learner-centric educational spaces, they also state, that said technology is not yet efficiently integrated with constructivist ideals. However, this trend has clearly shifted in recent years, with the aforementioned (social) media influencers and algorithms being just one example. Another would be the increasing development of virtual e-learning environments and platforms employing constructivist learning principles. Wu et. al. (2022) explores, how to combine theory and technology to create systems that increase academic performances, while Chen and Lo (2025) already provide a case study for how to transfer immersive digital heritage in an extended reality (XR) learning environment and make it accessible that way. Furthermore, Sopher et. al. (2025) explores the potential of teacher-student interaction within an interactive virtual reality (VR) environment. This displays a growing awareness of the potentials that virtual space holds for educational practice by featuring an oftentimes more explorative and interactive approach than traditional classroom settings.
A glimpse on adjacent theories and concepts
Given its long-standing roots, developments and broad potential for different applications, constructivism has also inspired a number of different other approaches and theories to learning and education, most of which reflect its influence in their pedagogical approaches. They include, but are not limited to Kolb’s experimental learning theory, Asher’s approach of total physical response (TPR), Blaine Ray’s suggestions on TPR storytelling and Lambert and Atchley’s development of digital storytelling and narrative learning. However, as these are quite extensive and show great potential for application in digital environments such as VR as well, they will be covered in a separate blog post.
Reflection and summary
Applying constructivist principles to the planned immersive experience would appear to have great potential for individual exploration and knowledge creation by the user. By creating a VR based virtual environment, that allows the user to find their own meaning in the presented knowledge, the research findings can be transferred much more directly. Said environment will be, as explained in a previous post, expanded by adding an additional layer of web-based presentation, that further expands the potential for exploration and development.
Here it is important to note, that the selection of information to display in the created experience will be inherently subjective in nature as well. This is very much in line with the Skušek’s collection process, as neither Ivan nor Tsuneko aimed to ever recreate any objective representation of Chinese living conditions. It was rather the opposite: By displaying their personal selection of pieces, which were by its very nature purchased following a subjective selection process, they presented their interpretation of a lived-in museum for Chinese arts and cultural pieces. It could thus be argued, that the pair were already, albeit not aware of it at the time, very much following some base constructivist principles. Tsuneko, as an early predecessor to the modern curator, could thereby very much be seen as Vygotsky’s “more knowledgeable other”, guiding the visitors of their home into a new field of knowledge. This idea could even further be expanded upon by placing the visitor into the role of the explorative learner, given that they were still able to explore and directly interact parts of the collection on a more personal level when it was displayed in the Skušek’s apartment.
As such, the developed virtual environment also will not claim to be objective. It will rather try to capture and recreate the very subjective experience the Skušeks once created and displayed and present it within the virtual in a manner, that allows the visitor and user to find their own meaning and interpretation of it, while also providing all the information available for exploration. The exact details, of what such a recreation may encompass will be covered in a different post.