Such systems tend to be self-organizing in responseto environmental feedback; they can change in non-linear and dynamic ways and can invent entirely newresponses to external forces. These concepts provide adynamic, change-oriented perspective on organiza-tions. They help to explain how organizations canrestructure themselves continually to keep pace withfast-changing environments.

See also: Bureaucracy and Bureaucratization; Bu-reaucratization and Bureaucracy, History of; Lead-ership in Organizations, Psychology of; Leadership inOrganizations, Sociology of; Organization: Overview;Organizational Climate; Organizational DecisionMaking; Organizations and the Law; Organizations,Sociology of

Bibliography

Aldrich H E 1979 Organizations and En�ironments. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Ashby W R 1956 An Introduction to Cybernetics. Wiley, NewYork

Brown S L, Eisenhardt K M 1998 Competing on the Edge.Harvard Business School Press, Boston

Buckley W 1967 Sociology and Modern Systems Theory. Pren-tice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Holland J H 1995 Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Com-plexity. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA

Katz D, Kahn, R L 1966 The Social Psychology of Organiz-ations. Wiley, New York

Lawrence P R, Lorsch J W 1967 Organization and En�ironment.Harvard University Press, Boston

Miller J G 1978 Li�ing Systems. McGraw-Hill, New YorkScott W R 1981 Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open

Systems. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJThompson J O1967Organizations inAction.McGraw-Hill,New

Yorkvon Bertalanffy L 1956 General systems theory. General Systems

1: 1–10

T. G. Cummings

Co-constructivism in Educational Theory

and Practice

Ever since Piaget’s dynamically Kantian epistem-ology, it has been widely accepted as a pervasiveassumption that learning is a constructive process. Incontrast to the epistemological assumption of em-piricism that what we know is a direct reflection ofontological reality, learning is considered as an activeconstruction of knowledge. Learners, as they strive tomake sense of their world, do not passively receivestimulus information matching independent physicalstructures, but genuinely interpret their experience by

(re)organizing their mental structures in increasinglysophisticated ways, while interacting with the physicaland symbolic environment. According to Piaget andmost of his successors in cognitive, developmental,and educational psychology, this process of adaptiveand viable reality construction is enabled and con-strained both by biologically grounded structures (thestrength and scope of which, however, are not yet wellknown) and by the already existing preknowledge(concepts, operative schemas, and structures) of theindividual.

Even though the constructivist assumption makessome traditional problems in both psychology andeducation easier to solve, it also raises some new ones.An important problem is how we can think ofachieving intersubjectivity. How can individuals whopersonally construct their knowledge independently ofeach other come to the same or similar cognitivestructures? How can we share a knowledge of ourculture if people are conceived of as being sololearners, and socially isolated Robinson Crusoefigures?

One striking answer, which at the same timechallenges traditional (Western) epistemological con-structivism, stems from symbolic interactionist (Mead1934) and sociocultural theory (Vygotsky 1962). Itclaims that learning is fundamentally a social acti�ity.Learning and enculturation are not bounded by theindividual brain or mind but are intrinsically socialendeavors, embedded in a society and reflecting itsknowledge, perspectives, and beliefs. People constructtheir knowledge, not only from direct personal ex-perience, but also from being told by others and bybeing shaped through social experience and inter-action. The basis of personal development and en-culturation, thus, is not the socially isolated con-struction of knowledge, but its co-construction in asocial and cultural space. Or, as Bruner puts it: ‘Mostlearning in most settings is a communal activity, asharing of the culture. It is not just that the child mustmake his knowledge his own, but that he must make ithis own in a community of those who share his sense ofbelonging to a culture’ (Bruner 1986, p. 86). Knowl-edge, from this perspective, is no longer seen as solelyresiding in the head of each individual, but as beingdistributed across individuals whose joint interactionsand negotiations determine decisions and the solutionof problems.

1. Concept and Process of Co-construction

No precise and widely accepted definition of theconcept and process of co-construction can be foundin psychological or educational literature. What hasbeen provided is very diverse and depends on thetheoretical context in which it is embedded. Dif-ferences can be found with regard to at least threeaspects:

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(a) the social type of discourse eligible to be calledco-constructive: mother–child dialog, peer interaction,teacher–student interaction, learning in teams,computer-supported collaborative work;

(b) the psychopedagogical processes involved inproductive co-constructive activity: productive dialogsuch as exploratory talk and collective argumentation,collaborative negotiation after sociocognitive conflictor as a process of reciprocal sense-making, jointconstruction of a shared understanding, elaborationon mutual knowledge and ideas, giving and receivinghelp, tutoring and scaffolding;

(c) the expected outcomes of collaboration: taken-as-shared individual vs. socially shared cognitions;convergence and intersubjectivity; academic task ful-fillment, student motivation, and conceptual devel-opment; effects on skills in listening, discussion,disputation, and argumentation.

Common to most theoretical contexts of co-constructivism is the implication of some kind of col-laborative activity and, through joint patterns ofawareness, of seeking some sort of convergence,synthesis, intersubjectivity, or shared understanding,with language as the central mediator. Theorists,moreover, largely converge in the adopted method-ology of microgenetic analysis that has been usedto examine the inherently fragile processes of co-construction.

1.1 (Neo-)Piagetian Perspecti�e

In a (neo-)Piagetian framework, true dialog becomespossible and facilitates the individual cognitive con-struction of operatory structures when children areable to take other persons’ points of view intoconsideration and when they are able to resolvesociocognitive conflict. Although regarded (by theearly Piaget) as a developmental factor, social in-teraction—specifically, peer interaction—remainsmore of a catalyst for individual cognitive devel-opment. According to studies carried out by co-workers of Piaget (e.g., Doise and Mugny 1984, Perret-Clermont et al. 1991), social factors, such as the needto deal with conflicting perspectives, can have aproductive impact on cognitive behavior. For ex-ample, in a Piagetian conservation task, pupils moreeasily progressed to a subsequent level of develop-ment after having been confronted by contradictoryjudgments given by an adult or another child.

1.2 (Neo-)Vygotskyan context

In Vygotsky’s cultural-historical view of developmentas a process of meaningful appropriation of culture,the interactive foundation of the cognitive is at thecore of the developmental process. In contrast toPiaget’s view, however, ‘the constructivist principle ofthe higher mental functions lies outside the in-

dividual—in psychological tools (such as ‘language’)and interpersonal relations’ (Kozulin 1998, p. 15).According to Vygotsky’s claim that interpersonalinteractions on a social plane serve as prototypes forintrapersonal processes, i.e., for functions to be inter-nalized, co-construction can be seen as (asymmetrical)adult–child interaction, or interaction between a childand a more capable peer, in the ‘zone of proximaldevelopment.’ ‘What a child can do today in co-operation, tomorrow he will be able to do on his own’(Vygotsky 1962, p. 87). The quality and developmentof higher order thinking is prepared by the co-constructive patterns and distinctive properties ofsocial interaction. Meaningful new learning emergesby embedding mental functions (like logical argu-mentation, proof, reflection, or problem solving) intospecific forms of goal-directed interaction and dialog,where more knowledgeable individuals tailor a task insuch a way that a child can successfully coperform it.The acquisition of a new concept or mental functionbecomes progressively more skillful as the child learnsto respond in gradually more sophisticated and per-sonally more meaningful ways to the co-constructive,sense-mediating context of adult regulations, andeventually takes over responsibility for his or her ownlearning.

1.3 Perspecti�e of Situated and Socially SharedCognition

Situated learning theory views human cognition asbeing embedded in and inseparable from specificsociocultural contexts. The goal of learning is to entera community of practice and its culture, i.e., to learn,like an apprentice, to use tools as practitioners usethem (Brown 1989). As a process, learning takes placethrough the interaction and transaction betweenpeople and their environments. Co-construction, froma situated cognition perspective, can be seen as havingtwo or more individuals collaboratively construct ashared understanding, or a solution to a problem,which neither partner entirely and necessarily posses-ses beforehand (Chi 1996). In a widely quoted def-inition proposed by Roschelle and Teasley (1995):‘Collaboration is a coordinated, synchronous activitythat is the result of a continued attempt to constructand maintain a shared conception of a problem’ (p.70).

At the heart of this concept of co-construction aretwo coexisting activities: collaboratively solving theproblem, and constructing and maintaining a jointproblem space. Both activities require constant nego-tiations and recreations of meaning, i.e., trying to findout what can reasonably be said about the task inhand, and occur in structured forms of conversationand discourse utilizing language and physical actionsas their most important mediators and resources. Withthe use of symbolic tools, it becomes possible for theconversants to express and objectify meanings, to

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Co-constructi�ism in Educational Theory and Practice

compare and change them deliberately, to exchangeand renegotiate them with others, and to reflect on theorganization of judgments and arguments (see vanOers 1996). However, as observational studies show,co-constructive learning is hardly a homogeneous butan inherently fragile process in the service of con-vergence and mutual intelligibility. The achievementof a shared conceptual structure cannot be reliablypredicted, nor does the iterative construction of a jointproblem space through cycles of displaying, con-firming and repairing occur by simply putting twostudents together. As Roschelle and Teasley (1995,p. 94) remark:

Students’ engagement with the activity sometimes divergedand later converged. Shared understanding was sometimesunproblematic and but oftentimes troublesome. The intro-duction of successful ideas was sometimes asymmetric,although it succeeded only through coordinated action. Theseresults point to the conclusion that collaboration does notjust happen because individuals are co-present: individualsmust make a conscious, continued effort to coordinate theirlanguage and activity with respect to shared knowledge.

1.4 Context of Discourse Linguistics: Grounding

From the perspective of communication or conver-sation analysis, co-constructive or collaborative learn-ing requires individuals to establish, maintain, andupdate some degree of mutual understanding. Thebasic process by which this is accomplished betweenindividuals is called grounding (Clark and Brennan1991). Grounding as a basic form of collaborationmeans the moment-by-moment coordination and syn-chronization of the content-specific as well as theprocedural aspects and steps of co-constructive ac-tivity. There is no need, however, to fully ground everyaspect of an utterance. Clark and Brennan (1991, p.148) frame a pragmatic criterion for grounding: Theconversants ‘mutually believe that they have under-stood what [they] meant well enough for currentpurposes.’ Thus, the techniques that are used forgrounding are shaped by the goal and the medium ofcommunication. That is, the criterion of groundingand the techniques exploited for its maintenancedramatically change according to the purpose ofcommunication (e.g., planning a party, swappinggossip, or gaining deep understanding) and the con-straints of its medium (copresence and visibility inface-to-face communication; sequentiality and review-ability in letter communication, e-mail, or computer-supported collaborative work).

1.5 Pedagogical Context of Tutoring

Another aspect of concern for the social nature oflearning—and for a crucial way in which it is sup-ported by culture—is instructional dialog or con-versation. This term refers to a discursive activity in

classrooms that permits the co-construction of mean-ing between teachers and students, tutors and tutees,the more and the less experienced. Consistent withVygotsky’s theory of the constructive role played byadults in children’s acquisition of knowledge, theteacher’s goal of assistance can be seen as trying to getthe students to share his or her understanding andknowledge. However, because of the asymmetricaldistribution of knowledge between teachers and stu-dents, understanding might be expected to be lessjointly constructed in instructional conversation thanit is observed to be in peer-cooperative dialog. Actionsthat tutors or teachers can take in order to elicitresponses, including some co-constructive behaviorfrom a tutee, are, for example, described in literatureon reciprocal teaching and on cognitive apprenticeship(Collins et al. 1989). They can be subsumed under twobroad categories: (a) modeling, scaffolding, and fadingas content-specific ways of providing hints, strategies,and situational forms of coaching and guidance thatare tailored to the needs of individual students; and (b)prompting as a more content-neutral invitation by thetutor to elicit elaborations, reflections, and self-explanations from students (Chi 1996).

2. Pedagogical Facilitation of Co-construction

The question of how best to support co-constructivelearning is concerned with the design of effectivecollaborative learning environments. Much empiricalwork has addressed the conditions under whichproductive collaborative interaction is most likely tooccur, and a whole range of possible ways to enhanceits quality has been provided. Among the inputcharacteristics that exert a complex influence upon thequality of interaction are: the preparation of thestudents for collaborative learning (including trainingfor cooperation and discourse prior to the col-laborative learning event), the establishment of aculture of dialog andof problem-based learning, groupcharacteristics (composition, size, ability and sex), thegoal and incentive structure of the task, and thestructuring of group interaction (see, for a review,Webb and Palincsar 1996).

2.1 Importance of Dialog

Probably themost important single feature of a cultureof collaborative learning is dialog as opposed to, e.g.,solo learning and teacher monologs. Emphasis onjoint learning and instructional conversation amongpeers, and between teachers and students, is associatedwith the internal mediating processes that are essentialfor an understanding of how co-construction throughdiscourse operates and influences outcomes. Thepedagogical cultivation of processes such as nego-tiation of meaning, reciprocal sense-making, revisingone’s cognitions in situations of sociocognitive con-flict, precise verbalization of reasoning and knowl-

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Co-constructi�ism in Educational Theory and Practice

edge, listening to others’ lines of argumentation,tuning one’s own information to that of a partner,giving and receiving help, or modeling cognitive andmetacognitive activities to be internalized by theparticipating individuals should, thus, be placed at thecore of instructional design.

2.2 Support Structures for Collaborati�e Thinkingand Problem Sol�ing

A means of improving the quality of collaborativethinking is explicit process-related and task-relatedsupport structures in the learning environment (Pauliand Reusser 2000). Process-related support structuresrefer to the structuring of the interaction through theimplementation of scripts for collaboration, such as‘reciprocalteaching’,‘scriptedcooperation’,or‘promp-ting’ for questions and elaborations. These tech-niques have in common the fact that a set of cognitiveand metacognitive strategies which have to be used ina prescribed way is provided. A complementary wayof supporting collaborative learning is to providestudents with task-specific support structures and help.The main goal of task-related assistance, includingmore or less explicit instructions, domain-specificformats of task representation, and the modeling ofstrategies, is to scaffold students’ domain knowledgeconstruction, understanding, and skill acquisition.What is not yet clear, however, is how much struct-uring of the interaction is actually beneficial. Ideally,the quality and quantity of guidance and help has to beadjusted to the learners’ subjective needs. As Cohen(1994) has pointed out, overstructuring interactionmay be counterproductive and have detrimental ef-fects, if it ‘prevent[s] students from thinking forthemselves and thus gaining the benefits of theinteraction’ (p. 22).

One promising possibility for making environmentsmore supportive for collaborative learning is to enrichlearning situations with technology. Well-designedcomputer-based cogniti�e tools provide users withboth process-related and task-related instruments ofthought and communication. As mediational re-sources and cognitive tools for the representation,negotiation, and modeling of concepts and activities,educational software has the potential—by makingconceptual structures and processes visible, accessible,and manipulable on a computer screen—to facilitateprocesses of sharing understanding and of achievingconvergence and intersubjectivity (Reusser 1993).

2.3 Structuring the Role of Teachers

The role of teachers in the co-constructive activities oflearners can be described within the didactic frame-work of ‘cognitive apprenticeship’ (Collins et al. 1989).According to the ethnographic model in which prac-tices and principles of traditional craftsmanship are

applied to cognitive learning activities, teachers, ex-perts, or more capable peers provide guidance andsupport to learners as they participate as apprenticesin authentic and task-related, structured social inter-actions. As opposed to a transmissionist view ofinstruction, teachers should provide aid in the in-tellectual development of students in ways that leaveroom for negotiation and joint expansion of meaning:(a) as scaffolds and role models for the behavior thatstudents are expected to engage in; (bi) as activeparticipants in learning groups aiming at shaping thegroup’s dialog; (c) as monitors of co-constructivenorms in social interactions in which negotiation oftaken-as-shared meaning is essential (Webb andPalincsar 1996); (d) as advocates of content-specificstandards and of the achievement of convergenceand intersubjectivity in understanding and problemsolving.

Associated with this shift in the pedagogical orien-tation of teachers is a shift in the role of learners andthe organization of classrooms. In the wake of a viewthat sees learning essentially as sociocultural inter-action, classrooms should develop from aggregationsof solo learners to communities engaged in co-constructive learning. That is, individuals shouldbecome acculturated members of a culture and com-munity through collaboration and negotiation. Or, asBruner (1986, p. 123) has put it: culture as ‘a forum fornegotiating and renegotiating meaning and for ex-plicating action ... is constantly in process of beingrecreated as it is interpreted and renegotiated by itsmembers.’

See also: Cooperative Learning in Schools; Piaget,Jean (1896–1980); Piaget’s Theory of HumanDevelopment and Education; Situated Cognition:Contemporary Developments; Situated Cognition:Origins; Vygotskij, Lev Semenovic (1896–1934);Vygotskij’s Theory of Human Development and NewApproaches to Education

Bibliography

Brown J S, Collins A, Duguid P 1989 Situated cognition and theculture of learning. Education Researcher 18(1): 32–42

Bruner J S 1986 Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. HarvardUniversity Press, Cambridge, MA

Chi M T H 1996 Constructing self-explananations and scaf-folded explanations in tutoring. Applied Cogniti�e Psychology10: 10–49

Clark H H, Brennan S E 1991 Grounding in communication. In:Resnick L B, Levine J, Teasley S D (eds.) Perspecti�es onSocially Shared Cognition. American Psychological Associ-ation, Washington, DC pp. 127–49

Cohen E G 1994 Restructuring the classrooms: Conditions forproductive small groups. Re�iew of Educational Research 64:1–35

Collins A, Brown J S, Newman S E 1989 Cognitive appren-ticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and math-ematics. In: Resnick L B (ed.) Knowing, Learning, and In-

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struction: Essays in the Honor of Robert Glaser. Erlbaum,Hillsdale, NJ

Doise W, Mugny G 1984 The Social De�elopment of the Intellect.Pergamon Press, Oxford

Kozulin A 1998 Psychological Tools. A Sociocultural Approachto Education. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

Mead G H 1934 Mind, Self, and Society. University of ChicagoPress, Chicago

Pauli C, Reusser K 2000 Cultivating students’ argumentationand reasoning in solving mathematical text problems throughthe use of a computer tool: a video-based analysis ofdialogues. Research Report. University of Zurich Institute ofEducation (http:}}www.didac.unizh.ch)

Perret-Clermont A-N, Perret J-F, Bell N 1991 The socialconstruction of meaning and cognitive activity in elementaryschool children. In: Resnick L B, Levine L, Teasley S D (eds.)Perspecti�es on Socially Shared Cognition. American Psycho-logical Association, Washington, DC pp. 41–62

Reusser K 1993 Tutoring systems and pedagogical theory:Representational tools for understanding, planning, andreflection in problem-solving. In: Lajoie S P, Derry S (eds.)Computers as Cogniti�e Tools. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ pp.143–78

Roschelle J, Teasley S D 1995 The construction of sharedknowledge in collaborative problem solving. In: O’Malley C E(ed.) Computer-supported Collaborati�e Learning. Springer,Berlin pp. 69–97

van Oers B 1996 Learning mathematics as meaningful activity.In: Steffe L P, Nesher P, Cobb P, Goldin G A, Greer B (eds.)Theories of Mathematical Meaning. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJpp. 91–113

Vygotsky L S 1962 Thought and Language. Harvard UniversityPress, Cambridge, MA

Webb N M, Palincsar A S 1996 Group processes in theclassroom. In: Berliner D C, Calfee R C (eds.) Handbook ofEducational Psychology. Macmillan, New York pp. 841–73

K. Reusser

Code switching: Linguistic

Code-switching (CS) refers to the mixing, by bilinguals(or multilinguals), of two or more languages indiscourse, often with no change of interlocutor ortopic. Such mixing may take place at any level oflinguistic structure, but its occurrence within theconfines of a single sentence, constituent, or evenword,has attracted most linguistic attention. This articlesurveys the linguistic treatment of such intrasententialswitching.

In combining languages intrasententially, variousproblems of incompatibility may arise. The mostobvious derive from word order differences: underwhat conditions, if any, can the boundary betweenconstituents ordered differently in two languages hosta switch? Other potential combinatorial difficultiesinvolve mismatches in grammatical categories, sub-categorization patterns, morphology, and idiomaticexpressions. Systematic examination of the sponta-neous speech of bilinguals resident in a wide range of

communities suggests, however, that speakers gen-erally manage to circumvent these difficulties. CStends not to produce utterances that contain mono-lingually ungrammatical sentence fragments. Discov-ery of the mechanisms enabling such ‘grammatical’ CSis the major goal of current research. Central questionsinclude locating permissible switch sites and ascertain-ing the nature (hierarchical or linear, variable orcategorical) of the constraints on switching.

1. Background

Though CS is apparently a hallmark of bilingualcommunities world-wide, it has only begun to attractserious scholarly attention in the last few decades.Researchers first dismissed intrasentential code-switching as random and deviant (e.g., Weinreich1953}1968) but are now unanimous in the convictionthat it is grammatically constrained. The basis for thisconviction is the empirical observation that bilingualstend to switch intrasententially at certain (morpho)syntactic boundaries and not at others. Early efforts toexplain these preferences proceeded by proscribingcertain switch sites, for example, between pronominalsubjects and verbs or between conjunctions and theirconjuncts. However, these particular sites were soonreported to figure among the regular CS patterns ofsome bilingual communities.

The first more general account of the distribution ofCS stemmed from the observation that CS is favoredat the kinds of syntactic boundaries which occur inboth languages. The equi�alence constraint (Poplack1980) states that switched sentences are made up ofconcatenated fragments of alternating languages, eachof which is grammatical in the language of itsprovenance (see also Muysken 2000). The boundarybetween adjacent fragments occurs between two con-stituents that are ordered in the same way in bothlanguages, ensuring the linear coherence of sentencestructure without omitting or duplicating lexical con-tent.

That general principles, rather than atomistic con-straints, govern CS is now widely accepted, thoughthere is little consensus as to what they are or how theyshould be represented. Much current research assumesunquestioningly that the mechanisms for languageswitching follow directly from general principles of(monolingual) grammar. Theories based on this as-sumption tend to appeal to such abstract grammaticalproperties as inter-constituent relationships (e.g., gov-ernment, case assignment) and}or language-specificfeatures of lexical categories (i.e., subcatgorization ofgrammatical arguments, inherent morphological fea-tures).

Since Klavans’s (1985) proposal that CS was con-strained by structural relations, the formal linguistictheories successively in vogue have each been extendedto encompass the data of CS. Di Sciullo et al. (1986),for example, identified the relevant relations as C-

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Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences ISBN: 0-08-043076-7