I read through the information on constructivism and ended up having many unanswered questions which is what the theory of constructivism is all about. Constructivism is encouraging your students to seek out questions and then to discuss, research, and ponder with other peers until they find some answers or solutions based on their prior knowledge. Some of the questions that I thought of as I read the information include:
1. Is constuctivism relevant to all subject areas because I found that the demonstrations support the subject of science in experimentation but how would you use constructivism to teach reading?
2. Constuctivism uses alot of language and questioning techniques, How would you incorporate this theory to second language users or to a class of students who are severely delayed in language development?
3. How do you convince parents in constructivism when they are always questioning such things as why hasn't my child memorized the times table in mathematics even when you have taught the skills, tools or tricks in being able to locate the tools to finding the answers?
4. How can a teacher practice constuctivism when there are provincial assessments in mathematics and the teachers feel the pressure to teach according to the assessments?
Our teachers are teaching a math program. They are expected to teach a certain strand every two months and then they are expected to do a unit test which needs to be filed in the office. The traditional classrooms have textbooks and our classrooms are still required to follow the guidelines that are adopted by our division. It is difficult to change our teaching methods when we have regulations and procedures that we have to follow.
I totally agree that constructivism would help to eliminate the boredom that is in our classrooms because these are choices that the students are making and they would have to take responsibility for their choices but it certainly has limits.
The technology that is available would certainly benefit the students who are capable of formulating questions about the world that they live in. At home I often see my own children going on websites to find information about the things they want to know. They will often instruct my husband and I to google questions about everyday questions regarding our home such as how to fix a frozen water pipe or whatever else we need to know.
As a learner, I wonder how I can use constructivism because Abbott states that we build on prior knowledge and my technology skills are very limited so I need to learn from the very basics.
On the pod cast McMillian talks about her learning process and I wish I could jump twelve years into the future to see where I will be at in my learning about technology. I guess its nice to know that I will learn.
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You pose great questions about Constructivism. I believe that we use pieces of different learning theories all the time. If something doesn't work we try something else. I blogged something about this last week.
ReplyDeleteAs for assessment, laden curriculums, and timelines they control what really happens in a course and maybe how the content is taught.
I, too, would like to see into the future and see how technology changes how we teach. It should be fun and interesting getting there, though.
I guess for me, your questions lead me to ask, is learning transmission of facts and information or is learning about building one’s own understanding based on experiences and prior knowledge? Here is my long winded reflection….
ReplyDeleteWhen we talk about reading instruction I think back to when I began teaching and phonics was the main form of instruction. The reading program (Starting Points with Mr. Mugs) had a controlled vocabulary in which words were introduced a few at a time and all texts built on the words introduced in previous stories. Priority was placed on “reading” a text by phonetic decoding and sight word recognition. Making sense of the text came after that.
This approach worked well for students who had a strong auditory learning style. However the texts themselves were boring for many children and “controlled” their thinking to a certain extent. In another blog someone mentioned that “whole language” has been a disaster. Has it? Why? I can only speak from my own experience – when whole language came in (which is a more constructivist approach to reading instruction), many teachers did not necessarily have the background and understanding to teach reading from the changing theoretical perspective. I think the same with those teachers struggling to teach math using new approaches. The move from teacher-centered instruction to learner-centered instruction and learning is not easy for many. I think the second one takes more work and requires a deeper understanding of individual learners needs and achievement than ever before.
If we look at reading from a constructivist perspective, I think we see reading as making meaning. A constructivist teacher will focus on pre-reading strategies such as activating prior knowledge so that students can make connections with the content and context of the story and on setting purposes for reading so that there is a personal connection to the text. Learners are also encouraged to make predictions about what will happen based on titles, images and students’ prior experiences.
During and after reading activities include making connections of text to self, connections of text to text (another story with a similar theme) and text to world.
Each of these activities encourage students to make personal connections to the story (text) and not just listen and repeat the teacher’s interpretation of the text.
They also encourage students to make different connections based on their prior experiences. Social dialogue is a key component of learning.
While behaviourist approaches to learning focus on repetition and rote learning, Constructivist learning approaches focus on the important and making personal meaning. Behaviourist approaches are easier to evaluate because there is a set list of words, math facts or other content that someone has deemed important that can be tested and evaluated. Assessment in a constructivist learning environment can be more wholist but often more complicated.
Changing approaches to math instruction are also designed to help learners understand math in multiple ways rather than to memorize single approaches. Learning in the 21st century requires our learners to be able to unique solve problems from multiple perspectives using a variety of strategies. Previous approaches to math instruction was mostly drill and practice. Students learned rote approaches to “doing math” but didn’t necessarily have a mathematical understanding of what was really going on and why. So as long as questions were presented in similar formats, children could be successful if they followed a procedure “on the page”. However, deep learning comes from the ability to apply concepts and ideas in unique situations. Thus, the move to more problem-based inquiry in math. The changes in curriculum and instruction are intended to support the idea that different learners bring different ways of solving problems to the table and more than one way of solving the problem is celebrated.
The challenge of parent understanding and support:
I have found that everyone believes they know all about education and teaching because they have all “been through it”. However most parents went through an educational system in which the “basics” were the focus on instruction. In math that was memorizing times table, addition facts etc. In reading, that also meant a degree of memorization and filling in the blanks with one-word answers. They learned through memorizing and regurgitating information. It becomes difficult for many parents to understand the shift made by Constructivist approaches in which the focus moves from regurgitation to thinking.
In his book, Learning by Heart, Roland Barth states that fifty years ago high school students graduated knowing 75% of what they needed to know for success in the workplace, the family and the community. Today, the estimate is that they graduate knowing 2% of what they need to know – the rest, the other 98% has yet to be learned. If this is true, and there are many indicators of the rapidly changing world our students are growing up, and statistics on the number of different careers they will have in their life time, we have to ask ourselves, are students best served by learning a container of facts and information or by learning how to think and solve unique problems?
Marnie