Toward a nuanced understanding of musicians’ professional learning pathways: What does critical reflection contribute?

Making sense of musicians’ professional learning pathways is of crucial importance to understanding their career progressions, their routes into creative employment, and the relevance of various policies to their professional lives. However, this is a far cry from understanding how critical reflection catalyzes diverse learning routes, especially when considering evidence originating from postgraduate musicians’ own accounts of their journeys into job creation. In this study, we invited five postgraduate classical musicians who were invested in professional learning through performance programs in higher education to contribute these types of personal perspectives. The article explores the value of postgraduate musicians’ own accounts of their journeys and illustrates how a more nuanced understanding of them can be arrived at through the use of visual-based tools, for example, Rivers of Musical Experience and Dixit Cards. This constructivist intervention prompted both group and individual critical reflections, as well as sense-making processes that enabled the participants to become more informed about the (typically overlooked or neglected) critical incidents that differently catalyze professional learning pathways. All of the participants articulated sociocultural influences that were situated along historical, present, and future points of departure and arrival, helping them to create meaning and understanding of themselves and their (at times unsettling) professional learning pathways. From the ensuing thematic analyses, we identified a commonality of themes across life phases with three key influential groups of people (parents, peers, and professionals) that strongly affected their professional learning pathways and learner identity-construction. The results indicate that the relationships between these phases and people are complex. The research illuminates the previously unexplored connection between the meaning-making trajectories that are instantiated through critical reflection, and adds to our understanding of the development of musicians’ professional learning pathways and learner identities.

A Constructivist Intervention Program for the Improvement of Mathematical Performance Based on Empiric Developmental Results (PEIM)

Teaching mathematics and improving mathematics competence are pending subjects within our educational system. The PEIM (Programa Evolutivo Instruccional para Matemáticas), a constructivist intervention program for the improvement of mathematical performance, affects the different agents involved in math learning, guaranteeing a significant improvement in students’ performance. The program is based on the following pillars: (a) students become the main agents of their learning by constructing their own knowledge; (b) the teacher must be the guide to facilitate and guarantee such a construction by being a great connoisseur of the fundamental aspects of the development of the child’s mathematical thinking; (c) the mathematical contents must be sequenced in terms of the complexity and significance for the student as well as contextualized at all times; and (d) the classroom must have a constructivist climate highlighting cooperative work among students. The implementation of PEIM along with the empirical evaluation conducted in several centers in Madrid and Zaragoza (Spain) confirm how students improve their mathematical competence. Both first- and second-grade students in elementary education were far more effective in solving problems, highlighting the use of more advanced strategies in their resolution and a lower incidence of conceptual errors. Moreover, it was possible to verify how the students proving greater difficulty, experienced an evolution in learning similarly to those who did not present it. The program provides customized education to allow the teacher to know at all times how he should be more influential on the students’ learning through mathematical profiles. Both teaching practice and teachers were observed, being that of the experimental group more prone to analyzing processes and allowing the construction of knowledge by students, due to their psycho-developmental training. As a result, we found several improvements through the implementation of the program that may serve, for upcoming years, as a basis for the necessary changes in the teaching of mathematics.

Developing the Concept of Order: An Example of Constructivist Remediation for Optimizing Memory and Learning Processes

In relation to the theme of this special issue, we present a recently developed instrument (ORDO) in order to demonstrate the heuristic value of the constructivist conception of conceptual development for devising cognitive remediation tools. It seems opportune to present this remedial instrument because the concept of order that it seeks to build is rather directly linked to memorization, basic school learning, and learning disabilities. In the first part, we begin by contrasting a constructivist remediation with a metacognitive one. Then, considering the decisive contribution of sequential processes to early school learning and the link between defective or inadequate sequential processes and learning disabilities, we defend the idea that promoting understanding of the concept of order constitutes a relevant educational and remedial objective. We argue that the combination of a metacognitive approach with interventions designed to foster conceptual development is a valuable alternative to processual training or mere metacognitive interventions. In the second part, we present the objectives of our proposed constructivist intervention, detail and justify the steps of its construction, describe its general organization, and give some examples of tasks and activities.

Constructivist Psychotherapy

Constructivism represents a profound development within cognitivism, posing challenges to many traditional treatment assumptions. The author addresses the remarkable difference between traditional cognitive therapy and constructivism, including the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge, problem definition, treatment goals, assessment, treatment of emotion, and therapist style of intervention. Constructivist metatheory is briefly discussed along with the conceptual bases of the orientation. Constructivist therapy is contrasted with traditional cognitive therapy, and constructivist intervention methods are identified. The article concludes with several case examples in which constructivist methods are applied to clinical problems.