Which approach emphasizes learners constructing their own understanding in…

Concept — Approaches to teaching differ in who generates the knowledge. Constructivism (Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner) holds that a learner actively builds meaning by acting on a problem situation and reconciling the new experience with the mental schemas already held; the teacher designs the task and mediates, rather than handing over a finished result.

Application — The stem names exactly that premise: the learner constructs his or her own understanding of a mathematical idea. In a primary mathematics class this looks like a child covering a rectangle with unit squares, counting them, and abstracting "area = length × breadth" from that activity, instead of receiving the formula first and practising it afterwards. The approach defined by that premise is the constructivist approach, so the answer is Constructivist.

Contrast with the other approaches

• Procedural — the emphasis falls on executing a taught algorithm accurately and fluently; the sequence of steps is supplied to the learner.

• Behaviorist — learning is modelled as stimulus–response conditioning shaped by drill, repetition and reinforcement; the learner’s internal meaning-making stays outside the account.

• Traditional — the class is organised around teacher exposition and textbook transmission; the learner receives the finished rule and reproduces it.

Cross-check — NCF 2005 makes the same distinction for school mathematics: it asks that the subject move away from the transmission of ready-made procedures towards knowledge constructed by the child, and constructivism is the name given to that position in the pedagogy syllabus.