Constructivist Epistemologies in Front of Disciplinary Knowledge Challenges

Resumen

his paper highlights the educative consequences of contemporary constructivist perspective. Firstly, relationships between epistemology, psychology of knowledge and didactics are reviewed, and a relative autonomy of epistemological study is assened. Second, the mail theses of radical constructivism are critically presented, and a constructivist perspective founded in Piaget's work is discussed. Third, the adequacy of both perspectives in front of the educative challenge is evaluated: specifically, how to explain the child's elaboration of knowledge in a didactical context; particularly, how disciplinary knowledge is included in the constructive process. As a conclusion, this discussion shows that Piagetian constructivism is compatible with the individual construction of knowledge inside didactical situations; by the contrary, radical constructivism has many insolvable dlifficulties in this regard.