Constructivism
Knowledge is made through engagement
Constructivism emphasises the active construction of knowledge through experience and interpretation, including the research encounter. Social constructionism particularly foregrounds social and linguistic processes through which meanings and categories become established. These related traditions are not interchangeable in every discipline; state which version informs your account of knowledge and, where relevant, reality.
Use when examining how participants and researchers construct understandings, identities or categories, with scope to study interaction, context and competing versions of an experience.
Strengths
- Makes co-construction and negotiated categories visible
- Supports attention to marginalised or competing meanings
Limitations
- Different variants make substantially different philosophical claims
- Co-construction can be asserted without showing how it occurred
Know the boundary
Constructivism does not require denying material conditions or assuming that any account is equally credible.