Constructivism
Hello everyone,
I hope you are doing well. This week's topic is related to Constructivism. As the word implies, constructivism is the process of learning through the construction of language. Students weight new information against their previous understanding, thinking about and working through differences and then come to a new understanding.
Now lets trace its meaning back into history. Constructivism can be found in the work of Jean Piaget, identified with Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Piaget focused on how humans make meaning in relation to the interaction between their experiences and their ideas. His views tended to focus on human development in relation to what is occurring with an individual as distinct from development influenced by other persons.(source: Constructivism, Philosophy of Education).
Learning in a constructive way is active because you construct knowledge rather than just aquire it. --- But what does this mean in simple words?
Since constructivism helps learn by creating meaning from experience, this means that students will learn better and quicker when they interact with a problem or concept. This will make them take up an active role in class and therefore in learning activities. Let's supose for a minute that we are conducting a history seminar and we want to teach our students about Cold War. An interesting way to help them construct this knowledge instead of just learning it through the book is to role play. This way they learn through an activity that involves the whole class and all the students come up with ways that they will handdle the role play. This helps with their reasoning skills, critical thinking rather than just reading the lecture and try to memorize the main ideas. And it can also benefit in other ways that are not related to school, for example a student may understad that he/ she has got good acting skills, therefore help them with their careers in the future. Another reason why it is really effective is because it makes the class less boring by making it fun and stress-free.
Another way we can apply constructivism into our teaching is by giving our students a topic that is open to discussion and research. For example : Why is pollution affecting ecosystems? Since this topic is of a wide range, this will engage the students to do more research through different websites and online research tools. This will also allow for the use of multimedia to construct a general knowledge about the topic. Also the students may work in groups and ask and answer questions about different subtopics related to the main idea. They also may bring their personal experiences from what they have noticed in their own neighbourhood related to pollution.
So, it seems to me that we use constructivism a little more than we think in our everyday life and learning. It is a very helpful method because you learn from activities rather than theory and that stays on your memory much longer.
Let me know down in the comments if you enjoyed this post,
See you next time,
I hope you are doing well. This week's topic is related to Constructivism. As the word implies, constructivism is the process of learning through the construction of language. Students weight new information against their previous understanding, thinking about and working through differences and then come to a new understanding.
Now lets trace its meaning back into history. Constructivism can be found in the work of Jean Piaget, identified with Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Piaget focused on how humans make meaning in relation to the interaction between their experiences and their ideas. His views tended to focus on human development in relation to what is occurring with an individual as distinct from development influenced by other persons.(source: Constructivism, Philosophy of Education).
Learning in a constructive way is active because you construct knowledge rather than just aquire it. --- But what does this mean in simple words?
Since constructivism helps learn by creating meaning from experience, this means that students will learn better and quicker when they interact with a problem or concept. This will make them take up an active role in class and therefore in learning activities. Let's supose for a minute that we are conducting a history seminar and we want to teach our students about Cold War. An interesting way to help them construct this knowledge instead of just learning it through the book is to role play. This way they learn through an activity that involves the whole class and all the students come up with ways that they will handdle the role play. This helps with their reasoning skills, critical thinking rather than just reading the lecture and try to memorize the main ideas. And it can also benefit in other ways that are not related to school, for example a student may understad that he/ she has got good acting skills, therefore help them with their careers in the future. Another reason why it is really effective is because it makes the class less boring by making it fun and stress-free.
Another way we can apply constructivism into our teaching is by giving our students a topic that is open to discussion and research. For example : Why is pollution affecting ecosystems? Since this topic is of a wide range, this will engage the students to do more research through different websites and online research tools. This will also allow for the use of multimedia to construct a general knowledge about the topic. Also the students may work in groups and ask and answer questions about different subtopics related to the main idea. They also may bring their personal experiences from what they have noticed in their own neighbourhood related to pollution.
So, it seems to me that we use constructivism a little more than we think in our everyday life and learning. It is a very helpful method because you learn from activities rather than theory and that stays on your memory much longer.
Let me know down in the comments if you enjoyed this post,
See you next time,
I agree with your point of view about constructivism in learning. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteRegarding your question, I enjoyed reading this post!