International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

As Phillips (2000) observes, the term →  constructivism is associated with numerous doctrines and positions in the social sciences, but in the communication discipline constructivism is most associated with a theory of individual differences in communication skills developed by Jesse Delia and his colleagues at the University of Illinois in the 1970s. Although constructivism originally focused on individual differences in interpersonal competence, it has been applied to numerous communication events and behaviors. It has served as the foundation for theoretical and empirical analyses of relationship development and maintenance, cultural influences on communication, language acquisition and communicative development, socialization processes, and communication instruction. It has also been applied to numerous communication events and processes in business, families, education, health-care, mass media, and politics (for reviews, see Delia 1987 ; Applegate 1990 ; Gastil 1995 ; Coopman 1997 ; Burleson & Caplan 1998 ; Burleson 2007 ). Constructivism was initially developed to understand how people's interpretations of the social world shaped their communicative behavior. Early versions of the theory were influenced by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and the American philosopher George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), both of whom believed that effective communication ... log in or subscribe to read full text