A Comparative Study Of Constructivism In Buddhist And Western Educational Psychology

In this research,I aimed at examining the constructive learning strategies in Theravada Buddhist psychology in comparison to constructive learning theory in western educational psychology.Constructivism is a metatheoretical perspective that embraces diverse traditions from the fields of medicine,philosophy,psychology,and spiritual wisdom.Therefore,in this piece of research,since the research area has to be limited,I have focused only on the discussion on constructivism in western educational psychology with modern constructive psychotherapy from the perspective of constructivism in Buddhist psychology.Psychological teachings in Theravada tradition can be seen in the so-called "three baskets":Sutta(the collection Discourse),Vinaya(the collection of Disciplinary rule)and Abhidhamma(the collection of Metaphysics)and their commentaries.The history of Buddhist psychology can be dated back to the 6th century BC,which denotes the emergence of Buddhism in the northern part of ancient India.Western psychology was developed under several schools:structuralism,functionalism,behaviorism,Gestalt,psychoanalytic approach,humanistic approach and cognitive approach.When comparing research findings of these western psychological schools with Buddhist psychology,there are differences and commonalities between these two divergent traditions.Buddhist teachings on function of human mind are very descriptive and analytical than what is discussed in western psychology on function of human mind.And also the Buddhist analysis and explanation on Citta found in Theravada Abhidhamma is very subtle and more psychological.Constructivism in western educational psychology emerged with the rise of cognitive psychology.For constructivism,learners are no longer passive recipients and producers of information,but active constructors of their own conceptual understanding,and active meaning makers interacting with the physical and social world.Furthermore,constructivism emphasizes that knowledge cannot exist independently from the knower and cannot be reproduced and transmitted to one another.As learning is seen as a self regulatory process,learners are conceptualized as active in meaning making instead of passively responding stimuli.John Dewey,Jean Piaget,Bruner,Lev Vygotsky are key contributors to constructivism when developing it as a major theory in western educational psychology.John Dewey is considered the philosophical founder of constructivist approach,whereas Jean Piaget is often cited as the chief theorist among cognitive constructivists.Vygotsky is the major figure among theorists working on the social constructivism.According to this short summary it is clear that constructivism in western psychology has only a short history of nearly a hundred years when compared with constructivism in Buddhist psychology.There are plenty of Buddhist teachings that can be compared with research findings of Piaget,Bruner and Vygotsky regarding constructive learning.When examining constructivist learning approaches:problem based learning,discovery learning,inquiry learning,co-operative learning,peer tutoring and cognitive apprenticeship in western psychology,it can be noticed that there has been some influence of Buddhist constructive leaning approach in the development of constructivism in western psychology.Moreover,there are still many teachings that can be shared between the two schools to stimulate further development of constructivism as a learning theory.Meditation which shows the way for gaining the inner peace and Nibbana is a good constructive approach one can practise in the process of knowledge construction as the Buddha shows.In this research,constructive learning theory in Buddhist psychology has been compared with modern constructive learning theory in western education psychology.Buddhist teachings on constructive learning are similar to what is revealed by constructive learning theory in western psychology.In his teachings,the Buddha respected the cognitive ability of his disciples and organized the learning teaching process by avoiding negative reinforcement including punishment as learners can construct new knowledge by themselves under his guidance.Moreover,the Buddhist constructive learning strategies have been evaluated under the light of the comparative approach.In this way it is possible to explore ways in which Buddhist and constructivist educational psychology can fertilize the respective insights mutually.Nevertheless,the present system of education lacks methods based on constructive learning theories due to a number of reasons.A major one is,not paying proper attention to the selection of suitable strategies for teaching and the development of constructive learning in the context of formal,informal and non-formal education with the aim of improving competencies with the 21st century values rather than focusing just on the purely academic aspects of education.There are many lessons that can be taken from Buddhist teachings to implement sound learning strategies for the development of constructive learning.Teaching methods and teaching strategies used by the Buddha in constructive learning are remarkable and can provide education scholars with a variety of useful insights.At present,teachers and teacher educators are motivated to promote learner centered education where constructive learning is a central feature.Nevertheless,it is often pointed out that the teacher community is not ready to perform the role of constructive teacher as specified by constructivist theory.The major reason behind this is that the teacher competencies are not good enough to meet the theory-specific requirements.Because of this unfortunate situation,constructive learning environment in modern educational psychology marks its deterioration to a certain extent endowing adverse effects for the present educational system.The Buddha used himself as an example and a guide as to how to be a constructive teacher with relevant teacher competencies when helping children to construct knowledge by themselves.Even in the present therapeutic system,therapists practise client centered methods in order to provide a better service to the client.Humanistic psychology is the turning point of client centered therapy.When studying the Buddha's character as a therapist these clients centered therapy methods can be seen in explicit ways.The therapeutic processes followed by the Buddha are provided modern therapists with good lessons and his approaches can offer many deep insights to them.Due to competitive and stressful nature of the world,implementation of psychotherapy as a subject or a unit in the school system has become a need of present education for creating a child with sound mentality.As aouthor believes,if psychotherapy is introduced as a subject or as a unit in the educational sphere,constructivist approach in Buddhist psychology can be used in any country and at any time due to its profound nature.All in all,the time has come to explore more about constructive learning and effective constructive learning strategies for implementing constructive learning in present educational system critically and comparatively.It is concluded that,if theorists,teacher educators,.curriculum developers and teachers adopt Buddhist teachings on constructivism,teaching methods introduced by Buddhism and western educational psychology,the educational system can be more meaningful.Moreover,this kind of research would help emerge one of the indigenous psychologies that will provide many such testable concepts and techniques,and thus make a contribution towards the further expansion and development of modem psychology.Finally,this research would reveal to the world how far Buddhist educational psychology is perfect as a practical discipline.When conducting research for this thesis,mainly Sutta Pitaka and its commentaries have been used for a source of information.In addition to Sutta Pitaka and commentaries,the Buddhist books,research papers and research articles that belong to the latter period have been consulted as secondary sources to support research findings.Modern psychology books,relevant research papers and research articles have been examined to inform the discussion of constructive learning theory and constructive psychotherapy in western psychology.When achieving this objective,it was expected to conduct research from critical and analytical perspectives using descriptive,explanatory,comparative and evaluative method along eight chapters.The first chapter provides an introduction to the thesis,while the second chapter presents the relevant literature review.In the third chapter,I discuss the origin and development of both western and Buddhist psychology under two sub topics and ten topics under those two.The fourth chapter includes comparison of Buddhist and western psychology along seven sub topics.Constructivism in western psychology is discussed under eight sub topics in the fifth chapter,while constructivism in Buddhist psychology is the topic of the sixth chapter which is elaborated under seven sub topics.Buddhist teachings on constructive learning and modern educational psychology are discussed and evaluated from a comparative perspective presented in the seventh chapter.The last chapter summarizes the discussion of the previous chapters and contains remarks for the whole thesis.