Opening Statement

The Constructivism and Discourse Processes Research Group (CDPRG) was founded in 1994 by Luis Botella and Josep Gallifa (both from FPCEE Blanquerna. Universitat Ramon Llull). Since then, it has attracted a number of colleagues from the field of psychology and/or education interested in exploring the potential contributions of constructivism to a variety of research issues within our knowledge domains. Among them, Guillem Feixas and Manuel Villegas (both from Universitat de Barcelona) joined us in 1999, making the invaluable contribution of their long standing tradition of high quality involvement in the constructivist community. Our ways to approach our span of interests are as varied as ourselves, but we share some basic commonalities. Our view of constructivism equates it with a broadly defined epistemological framework based on the notion of human beings (and human systems) as proactive meaning makers and language users. We subscribe to the postmodern approach to discourse and language as constitutive rather than representative and as social (i.e., interpersonal) rather than private. Thus, our approach to psychological processes is distinctively discursive, narrative and relational. Click here to learn more about our position concerning these general issues. Our aim as a group and through this Web site is to make a contribution to an ongoing conversation, so please feel free to contact any of us.