Özet:

Problem Statement: Program designs, the mechanisms in which individual, learning task and interactional environment variables are predicted, planned, applied and evaluated together, are one of the elements of educational system in order to reach its goals. Purpose of the Study: The purpose of this study is to prepare and implement a hypothetical constructivist curriculum design in accordance with the assumptions of the constructivist learning theory and in the frame of these implementations, to determine how knowledge is constructed in the socio-cognitive context. Methodology: In the study, a mixed research design approach consisted of pretest-posttest control group design and qualitative data gathering procedures was used. The study was conducted in the 6th grade Social Studies Course at Beytepe Elementary School, in Ankara. While the experimental group attended to the application of the hypothetical constructivist curriculum design, the control group continued to the traditional instructional applications for ten weeks. The design includes characteristics of cooperative learning, problem based learning, and project based learning related to the constructivist learning approach. In the cooperative groups, learners took part in active, social, and creative activities in order to create solution designs about unstructured problem situations. Besides, each learner created a research based project in the course of experimental treatment. Qualitative data were gathered from learners’ reflective journal, metacognitive thinking reports, field notes through structured observation, teachers’ unstructured observation logs, and interviews with the participants. Qualitative data set was analyzed with the inductive content analyses technique that was specifically developed by the researcher for this study. Findings: By qualitative data analyses, results about physical environment, affective characteristics, social settings, cognitive features, socio-cognitive knowledge construction in context, and learners’ features were obtained. In the study, the pattern of socio-cognitive knowledge construction was found through synthesizing social environment and cognitive structure by qualitative data. It was seen that the construction of knowledge process in the socio-cognitive context was started by sharing prior knowledge. In the second phase, prior knowledge was interrogated. Creating cognitive conflicts in learners was found to be the most critical characteristics of this phase. Reaching to common meanings composed the other phase of knowledge construction in the sociocognitive context. Learners’ common meanings were created by exposure and interrogation of different prior knowledge although these are contrary of existing knowledge structure and created a totally different structure. Self regulation/organization was found to be the other phase of knowledge construction in the socio-cognitive context. Learners, who learn from common meanings that are socially appeared and shaped by others’ ideas, had self-organizations by reviewing their own knowledge structures or meanings. The last phase of knowledge construction in the socio-cognitive context was creating new/authentic knowledge. The new meanings cultivated with prior knowledge resulted in a new knowledge structure and this structure was reflected again as prior knowledge in learning process. Conclusions: The qualitative results put forward that, in the constructivist learning environments, the simultaneous and interactive dynamic structure between the physical, social, cognitive and affective characteristics, the learners’ features and the variables of the learning tasks may be considered as a base for constructing a knowledge

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