Constructing constructivism in management accounting education: reflections from a teaching cycle with innovative learning elements

Purpose This study aims to address the possibility of integrating some elements of the “radical constructivist” approach to management accounting teaching. It answers the following two questions: to what extent should management accounting educators construct a “radical constructivist” foundation to guide active learning? Then, in which ways can management accounting educators use qualitative methods to facilitate “radical constructivist” education? Design/methodology/approach The study uses a teaching cycle that implements innovative learning elements, e.g. learning from ordinary people, designed following the principles of “radical constructivism”, to engage students with “externalities” at the centre of their knowledge construction. It adopts an ethnographic approach comprising interviews and participant observation for the data collection, followed by the application of qualitative content and narrative analysis of the data. Findings The study findings and reflections illustrate that the majority of students respond positively to radical constructivist learning if the educators can develop an innovative problem-solving and authentic environment that is close to their real lives. The radical constructivist teaching cycle discussed in this study has challenged the mindsets of the management accounting students as it altered the traditional objectivist academic learning approaches that students were familiar with. Its use of qualitative methods facilitated active learning. Student feedback was sought as part of the qualitative design, which provided a constructive mechanism for the students and educators to learn and unlearn from their mistakes. This process enriched the understanding of learners (students) and educators of successful engagement in radical constructivist management accounting education and provides a base upon which to design future teaching cycles. Originality/value The paper provides proof of the ability of accounting educators, as change agents, to apply radical constructivist epistemology combined with multiple qualitative research methods by creating new constructive learning structures and cultures associated with innovative deep-learning tasks in management accounting education.

Interaction in Assistive Robotics: A Radical Constructivist Design Framework

Despite decades of research, muscle-based control of assistive devices (myocontrol) is still unreliable; for instance upper-limb prostheses, each year more and more dexterous and human-like, still provide hardly enough functionality to justify their cost and the effort required to use them. In order to try and close this gap, we propose to shift the goal of myocontrol from guessing intended movements to creating new circular reactions in the constructivist sense defined by Piaget. To this aim, the myocontrol system must be able to acquire new knowledge and forget past one, and knowledge acquisition/forgetting must happen on demand, requested either by the user or by the system itself. We propose a unifying framework based upon Radical Constructivism for the design of such a myocontrol system, including its user interface and user-device interaction strategy.

International Relations as a Social System: From Sociocybernetics to the Sociology of IR

Against current developments in the sociology of IR, from new systemic theorizations of world society to Bourdieusian approaches to the practices of IR scholars, this article claims that relevant problems remain regarding how IR theorizes its social location and reconciles the social character of the world it observes with the social character of its observations. To reformulate these problems, the article draws from an underused paradigm of social system theorizing, sociocybernetics, offering a radical constructivist treatment of the problem of observation and reflexivity. Elaborating the notion of second-order cybernetics and Niklas Luhmann's take on the reproduction of observing social systems, the article argues that IR can be conceived as an observing social system that adapts by altering and subdividing the semantic boundaries of its systemic communications, that is, IR theories. This socio-heuristic process structures both the first-order observations IR makes about the world, as well as second-order observations of itself. In this manner, the article argues that sociocybernetics-informed sociology of IR communications can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of IR as a social system that observes society from society.

The Social Construction of Reality (1966) Revisited: Epistemology and Theorizing in the Study of Religion

This paper takes the social constructivist approach, formulated by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, as a starting point for an investigation into epistemology and theorizing in the contemporary study of religion. It discusses various strands of scholarship in dialogue with social constructivism and questions in particular the reductionism of radical constructivist positions. Exploring the boundaries of the classical social constructivist paradigm, the article argues that students of religion should consider the implication of social, historical, embodied and material structures in the production of knowledge about religion. For that purpose, it draws on various soft realist approaches to stress the importance of remaining attentive to positionality (reflecting on the sites from where we theorize) and contextuality (reflecting on the inter-relation of discourse and materiality) in theorizing “religion”. Finally, the article suggests that soft realist positions can be integrated in a slightly broadened social constructivist framework for the study of religion.

Kenneth Fisher’s heuristics

Purpose The authors are interested in building descriptive – real life – models of successful investors’ investment reasoning and decision-making. Models designed to be useful for trying to replicate and evolve their reasoning and decision-making. The purpose of this paper, a case study, is to take the substantial material – on innovating the investing tools – published in four books (2006/2012, 2010, 2011, 2015) by a US stock investor named Kenneth Fisher (CEO of Fisher Investments, Woodside, California) and sketch Fisher’s investment innovating reasoning model. Design/methodology/approach To sketch Fisher’s investment innovating reasoning model, the authors used the Radical constructivist theory of knowledge, a framework for analyzing human action and reasoning called Symbolic interactionism and a qualitative analytic technique called Conceptual analysis. The authors have done qualitative research applied to the study of investment decision-making of a single professional investor. Findings In the paper, the authors analyzed and described the heuristics used by Fisher to build subsequent generations of investing tools (called by Fisher “Capital Markets Technology”) to try to make better forecasts to beat the stock market. The authors were interested in studying the evolutive dimensions of the tools to make forecasts of a successful investor: the “how to build it” and “how to evolve it” dimension. Originality/value The paper offers an account of Kenneth Fisher’s framework to reason the innovation of investing tools. The authors believe that this paper could be of interest to professional money managers and to all those who are involved in the study and development of the tools of investing. This work is also an example of the use of the Radical constructivist theory of knowledge, the Symbolic interactionist framework and the Conceptual analysis to build descriptive models of investment reasoning of individual investors, models designed to enable the reproduction/approximation of the conceptual operations of the investor.

Teoretisk erkendelse og læring

The value and function of theoretical knowledge is an important and disputed issue, which has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. I attempt to clarify the notion of theoretical knowledge and examine its general relationship to learning. Theoretical knowledge is not necessarily distinguished by any particular content; the adjective “theoretical” can just as well signify a particular methodological approach or a way of dealing with a topic, including the way it is conceptualized. I further argue that theoretical knowledge can be merely implicit and non-propositional. Though I reject a radical constructivist view, according to which knowledge acquisition consists in socialization, it must be admitted that socialization and the acquisition of theoretical knowledge do turn out to go closely hand in hand, inasmuch as theoretical knowledge is often a precondition of successful socialization. Concepts, principles, models and symbolic systems support the acquisition of both theoretical and other kinds of knowledge, but also help the learner to find her way about in an environment that is already formed by theories and conceptual understandings. Theoretical knowledge is both a learning instrument and a tool for navigation

Om realisme og konstruktivisme i Piagets læringsteori og genetiske epistemologi

<p>This paper deals with the epistemological foundations of Jean Piaget’s theory of learning and genetic epistemology. The purpose is to estimate the form of Piaget’s constructivism. I take advantage of Ernst von Glasersfeld’s ‘radical constructivist’ interpretation of Piaget. Contrary to von Glasersfeld, it is argued that Piaget at the same time is a realist with respect to the existence of the external world, and a ‘genetic-transcendental constructivist’ in relation to the development of knowledge. I interpret this paradox as Piaget’s acknowledgement of the co-existence of a 3. person and a 1. person epistemological perspective in the scientific investigation of cognition</p>