I recently read information about the theory of constructivism. The theory is based on our own understandings of the world through experiences and reflection. In the most basic sense, it encourages students to be active in creating their own knowledge and the nanalyze what is happening and why. I have many thoughts and questions after reviewing this theory.
If a teacher is not a constructivist, will his/her students have the opportunity to try this type of learning?
Will teachers do the pretesting to find the present knowledge base of each student?
Teachers and students are supposed to talk about what they learned, yet through classroom observations, the last 5-10 minutes of many classes are rarely used to review what was learned.
Many of the students seen as behaviour problems are students that are curious about something but rarely get the opportunity to explore. Wouldn't this theory help?
Are universities training our new teachers to teach this way? Many new teachers I have observed are in survival mode.
Assessment appears to be key to this theory. Do all teachers understand the difference between assessment and evaluation?
My new experiences with constructism has been interesting. This year I taught two new classes. Law 30 and Construction 20. I encouraged students to explore different ways of doing things, appreciate the views of others for further learning and to challenge themselves to take chances in learning for the sake of learning as opposed to what may be on the exam. The students were extremely uncomfortable. My perception is that many of our students do not learn this way in our schools yet we see the benefit of this theory. As teachers, we need to get out of our own comfort zones.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
You pose some good questions. Here are my thoughts:
Are universities training our new teachers to teach this way? The folks that I am in touch with certainly are. However, as I stated in Jim’s blog, one of the things that seems to happen is that the regulative discourses of school cultures (the articulated or implied “rules” of how we do things “here”) often restricts teachers from practicing in line with their beliefs and so in their efforts to survive the complexities of becoming a teacher, they conform to the socially constructed pedagogical expectations within the school and community. From a brain perspective, what happens is that when overwhelmed, we revert to basic levels of functioning, most often the classroom practices they grew up with. Too often I have heard pre-service teachers being told by experienced teachers “that university stuff doesn’t really work in the REAL world.” This empowers the ways of being and doing of the traditional teacher and often leaves the young inexperienced teacher wondering which way will really work.
As a result of new approaches you have tried, you stated, “The students were extremely uncomfortable. My perception is that many of our students do not learn this way in our schools yet we see the benefit of this theory.” What I perceive is that many of our students learn how to “do school” and not “how to learn”. At the undergraduate level I see students who want to know, “what do you want it to look like?” “can you show us a sample of what you want?” They have been trained that success is about giving the teacher what he/she wants. Is it that they don’t really learn this way or that they have been trained not to think creatively, divergently and explore multiple perspectives? I think that you would enjoy listening to Sir Kenneth Robinson
He also has some recent clips on Edutopia.
Marnie
In response to your blog on constructivism and assessment I would like to say that there are alternative means of assessment that we can use as administrators and educators to benefit all stakeholders. Participatory, appreciative, and empowerment forms of evaluation/assessment highly reflect the principles and practice of constructivism and connectivism. They allow for positive input from multiple parties to contribute to assessment as equals resulting in mutual empowerment. By using such forms of assessments I wonder how much more successful our students would be and how much more staff, parent and community involvement would occur.
I very much appreciated reading your views on constructivism Duane. How are you?
http://paul711.wordpress.com/
Post a Comment