THE REAL-WORLD ON A SHORT LEASH - THE (MIS)APPLICATION OF CONSTRUCTIVISM TO THE DESIGN OF EDUCATIONAL-TECHNOLOGY

Constructivism, or more precisely, a constructivist metatheory, presen tly prevails throughout professional education circles. Most educators easily accept constructivism's central premise that learners approach tasks with prior knowledge and expectations based on their knowledge of the world around them. Naturally, then, constructivist educational technologists have been guided by the implicit (and increasingly expli cit) desire to create ''authentic'' environments for learning: environ ments that correspond to the real world. In this paper, I argue that t echnologists have fended to paper over the critical epistemological di mension of constructivism by ''authenticating'' learning environments: creating environments that are predetermined to reflect the real worl d even though constructivist theory contrindicates precisely this. I s uggest that a rhetorical perspective on constructivism offers a way ou t of this bind and I propose some guidelines to assist developers of e ducational technologies in accommodating the essentially dialogic natu re of teaching and learning.