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Anthony Armstrong

SEDL Letter Volume IX, Number 3: Constructivism - Is It Constructivism? - 0 views

www.sedl.org/...construct.html

constructivism

shared by Anthony Armstrong on 29 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Start with what students know and help them build increasingly sophisticated understandings by making the material and subject matter relevant to them; this is a cornerstone of constructivist education.
  • Constructivist teachers see the viewpoints of their students as "windows into their reasoning." But to see through those windows, teachers must talk with and listen to their students - and allow students to come up with their own answers. Erroneous answers can reveal student viewpoints; in fact, they can give constructivist teachers a way to reach students and encourage the growth of new skills and more accurate understandings.
  • To better engage their students, constructivist teachers often present curriculum holistically, organizing materials in conceptual clusters or, as some constructivists put it, "big ideas." According to Brooks and Brooks, this instructional approach entices students to build meaningful knowledge "by breaking up the wholes into parts that they can understand" and work with. The emphasis on primary ideas instead of sets of discrete facts also naturally leads to cross-curricular teaching and learning.
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  • Thus, teachers should first determine the degree of their pupils' prior knowledge of a subject. This can help teachers alter the curriculum so study units can open with students' expressing their current assumptions; teachers design subsequent lessons to help students form a more accurate understanding of the subject matter by working with primary materials and raw data. Some constructivist teachers also modify a curriculum to cater to students' distinctive learning styles.
  • In contrast, constructivist teachers assess student learning while they teach to gain insight into students' understanding as well as the level of their cognitive development. Right and wrong answers are important to constructivist teachers - but so are opportunities to gain insight into their students' current understanding and the chance to enhance that understanding.
Anthony Armstrong

Contructivist Learning Theory - 0 views

www.stemnet.nf.ca/...cle2b.html

constructivism

shared by Anthony Armstrong on 29 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Behaviorial psychology is interested in the study of changes in manifest behavior as opposed to changes in mental states. Learning is conceived as a process of changing or conditioning observable behavior as result of selective reinforcement of an individual's response to events (stimuli) that occur in the environment. The mind is seen as an empty vessel, a tabula rasa to be filled or as a mirror reflecting reality. Behaviorism centers on students' efforts to accumulate knowledge of the natural world and on teachers' efforts to transmit it. It therefore relies on a transmission, instructionist approach which is largely passive, teacher-directed and controlled. In some contexts, the term behaviorism is used synonymously with objectivism because of its reliance on an objectivist epistemology
  • Objectivists believe in the existence of reliable knowledge about the world. As learners, the goal is to gain this knowledge; as educators, to transmit it
  • The role of education is to help students learn about the real world. The goal of designers or teachers is to interpret events for them. Learners are told about the world and are expected to replicate its content and structure in their thinking. (p.28)
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  • Classes are usually driven by "teacher-talk" and depend heavily on textbooks for the structure of the course. There is the idea that there is a fixed world of knowledge that the student must come to know.
  • There is little room for student-initiated questions, independent thought or interaction between students. The goal of the learner is to regurgitate the accepted explanation or methodology expostulated by the teacher. (p.3)
  • Where behaviorism emphasizes observable, external behaviours and, as such, avoids reference to meaning, representation and thought, constructivism takes a more cognitive approach.
  • Their role is not to dispense knowledge but to provide students with opportunities and incentives to build it up (von Glasersfeld, 1996). Mayer (1996) describes teachers as "guides", and learners as "sense makers". In Gergen's (1995) view, teachers are coordinators, facilitators, resource advisors, tutors or coaches.
  • The first is to introduce new ideas or cultural tools where necessary and to provide the support and guidance for students to make sense of these for themselves. The other is to listen and diagnose the ways in which the instructional activities are being interpreted to inform further action.
  • The focus of concern with the teacher and in teacher education is not just with the teacher's knowledge of subject matter and diagnostic skills, but with the teacher's belief, conceptions, and personal theories about subject matter, teaching, and learning.
  • Although we can tentatively come to know the knowledge of others by interpreting their language and actions through our own conceptual constructs, the others have realities that are independent of ours. Indeed, it is the realities of others along with our own realities that we strive to understand, but we can never take any of these realities as fixed. An awareness of the social construction of knowledge suggests a pedagogical emphasis on discussion, collaboration, negotiation, and shared meanings
  • Von Glasersfeld (1995) argues that: "From the constructivist perspective, learning is not a stimulus-response phenomenon. It requires self-regulation and the building of conceptual structures through reflection and abstraction" (p.14).
  • "Rather than behaviours or skills as the goal of instruction, concept development and deep understanding are the foci (...) (p.10). For educators, the challenge is to be able to build a hypothetical model of the conceptual worlds of students since these worlds could be very different from what is intended by the educator (von Glasersfeld, 1996).
  • How one arrives at a particular answer, and not the retrieval of an 'objectively true solution', is what is important.
  • learning emphasizes the process and not the product.
  • In this process, students' errors are seen in a positive light and as a means of gaining insight into how they are organizing their experiential world. The notion of doing something 'right' or 'correctly' is to do something that fits with "an order one has established oneself" (von Glasersfeld, 1987, p. 15).
Anthony Armstrong

SEDL Letter Volume IX, Number 3: Constructivism - The Practice Implications of Construc... - 0 views

www.sedl.org/...practice.html

shared by Anthony Armstrong on 29 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Constructivism's central idea is that human learning is constructed, that learners build new knowledge upon the foundation of previous learning.
  • learners come to learning situations with knowledge gained from previous experience, and that prior knowledge influences what new or modified knowledge they will construct from new learning experiences.
  • The second notion is that learning is active rather than passive
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  • Learners remain active throughout this process: they apply current understandings, note relevant elements in new learning experiences, judge the consistency of prior and emerging knowledge, and based on that judgment, they can modify knowledge.
  • First, teaching cannot be viewed as the transmission of knowledge from enlightened to unenlightened; constructivist teachers do not take the role of the "sage on the stage." Rather, teachers act as "guides on the side" who provide students with opportunities to test the adequacy of their current understandings.
  • teachers must note that knowledge and provide learning environments that exploit inconsistencies between learners' current understandings and the new experiences before them. This challenges teachers, for they cannot assume that all children understand something in the same way. Further, children may need different experiences to advance to different levels of understanding.
  • teachers must engage students in learning, bringing students' current understandings to the forefront.
  • learning experiences incorporate problems that are important to students, not those that are primarily important to teachers and the educational system.
  • Teachers can also encourage group interaction, where the interplay among participants helps individual students become explicit about their own understanding by comparing it to that of their peers.
  • Ample time facilitates student reflection about new experiences, how those experiences line up against current understandings, and how a different understanding might provide students with an improved (not "correct") view of the world.
  • Constructivist professional development give teachers time to make explicit their understandings of learning (e.g., is it a constructive process?), of teaching (e.g., is a teacher an orator or a facilitator, and what is the teacher's understanding of content?), and of professional development (e.g., is a teacher's own learning best approached through a constructivist orientation?). Furthermore, such professional development provides opportunities for teachers to test their understandings and build new ones. Training that affects student-centered teaching cannot come in one-day workshops. Systematic, long-term development that allows practice - and reflection on that practice - is required.
  • Teachers teach as they are taught, not as they are told to teach. Thus, trainers in constructivist professional development sessions model learning activities that teachers can apply in their own classrooms. It is not enough for trainers to describe new ways of teaching and expect teachers to translate from talk to action; it is more effective to engage teachers in activities that will lead to new actions in classrooms
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