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Improving Quality of Science Teacher Training in European Cooperation
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E-learning
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Constructivist approach in Science education
Constructivist approach in Science education
- know the main concepts of the constructivist theory so that be able to read and understand pedagogic literature and use their knowledge in their lesson preparation and in the description of pedagogic tasks;
- know some of constructivist theories;
- be able to name some of constructivist methods and approaches;
- be able to describe the role of the teacher according to the constructivist theory;
- know some of the constructivist ideas on teaching environment;
In the last years constructivism as an approach in education has a central position in didactical literature. The number of scientific articles and books on constructivism as a theory and as an approach in the education is huge. It is used in developing the educational standards in a number of states in the US and its use in teaching is highly recommended in some EU countries. Constructivist theory is definitely accepted as a modern and leading theory in the teaching of science. „Constructivism has become the most valuable guiding principle for the teachers of science, as well as for researchers in this field“ [1].
An important component of contemporary education in all school subjects is the tendency constructivist training to replace traditional training. In traditional training teacher gives educational information to students; students are passive learners and they receive mainly knowlidge about facts. Constuctivist training (training based on constructivist approach) stimulates students‘ activity in the process of learning the lessons.
Constructivist teaching fosters critical thinking and creates active and motiated learners. The constructivist theory is incarnated into the curriculum advocate that teachers create environments in which children can construct their own understandings. Twomey Fosnot (1989) recommends that a constructivist approach be used to create learners who are autonomous, inquisitive thinkers who question, investigate, and reason. A constructivist approach frees teachers to make decisions that will enhance and enrich students' development" in these areas.
“Constructivism" is a philosophical viewpoint on how the mind forms and modifies its understanding of reality. It is the foundation of our outlook on pedagogy and research.
Constructivism is a view of learning based on the belief that knowledge isn't a thing that can be simply given by the teacher at the front of the room to students in their desks. Rather, knowledge is constructed by learners through an active, mental process of development; learners are the builders and creators of meaning and knowledge.
In constructivist approach criticizing, collaboration, and mutual assistance are often used as a way students‘ development to be provoked, in order a new higher level of understanding to be achieved. Every constructivist lesson is based on students‘ activity.
Constructivist approach in teaching and learning is related to the concepts of knowledge and its acquisition. It is an understanding about nature of knowledge and about its development. That determines the epistemology‘s character of the constructivist approach.
- Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted.
- Prior knowledge impacts the learning process.
- Initial understanding is local, not global.
- Building useful knowledge structures requires effortful and purposeful activity.
According to the constructivist theory students build their knowledge by means of interpretation of the team-work and experience gained in their social environment. It means that initial knowledge and experience have an important role in the learning process and they form future activities of the learners.
The definition of constructivist made by Lever-Duffy is: “constructivist is one who believes that knowledge is constructed by the learner and it is unique to the individual who constructs it [2].
- Students come into our classrooms with an established world-view, formed by years of prior experience and learning.
- Even as it evolves, a student's world-view filters all experiences and affects their interpretation of observations.
- Students are emotionally attached to their world-views and will not give up their world-views easily.
- Challenging, revising, and restructuring one's world-view requires much effort.
A main constructivist idea is that knowledge is not “knowledge about the world” but it is a “construct of the world” (Sherman, 1995). Knowledge is not a fixed object; it is a construct of the individual understanding of students’ private experience about this object. Constructivist approach of learning underlines the authenticity, stimulates work on projects which include students, teachers, experts in a study circle. Objective of the constructivist approach is to create a study group that should be close to real life situations. In authentic environment students realize their responsibility for their own learning and its results.
According to constructivists, learning environment should give vast opportunities for gaining knowledge through real life situations, which require students to work collaboratively as they consider their own pace of work and help one another. So learners are not any more passive observers and acceptors, but they become active constructors of their own knowledge.
Constructivist paradigm gives an understanding how learning should be made easier through an appropriate type of activities. This model of learning refers to building knowledge through active participation in social, cultural, historical, and political context. Fundamental elements of the students’ active participation are dialogue, discussion, making decisions, and making models. So the constructivist approach focuses on ways of learning, and not that much on results of learning. It aims at constructing knowledge, not at reproduction of knowledge. A student must be able to express in different ways what is learned-verbally, visually, symbolically, etc.
Constructivism owes its popularity to its precisely formed theory, a theory that includes the idea about cognitive independence of learners. There is a widely spread opinion that constructivist approach is attractive, it is so to all these who appreciate the importance of cognitive independence and freedom. In this approach information is less important than the ability to acquire it. Knowledge is acquired and constructed actively as learners’ own experience is used (Brooks, 1993).
Development of constructivist theory is related to ideas and work of scientists as Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Ernst von Glaserfeld, Leo Vigotski, Faznot, etc.
One of the creators of the theory of development – Jean Piaget specifies key stages in children’s development, which influence learning; Jean Piaget draws a conclusion that children assimilate and accomodate knowledge based on existing schemes. In this way a teacher should consider the stages in children’s development; and the teacher’s role is to help students when they construct their own cognitive schemes.
Leo Vigotski creates the theory of social constructivism and forms the idea that language and speech are fundamentally important to intelligence and to successful learning.
Later, near the end of 80th years of twenty century, there is a rapid development in the theory of constructivism. Research work done by Vigotski and Dewey is combined with Piaget’s work in development of psychology in a wider constructivist approach.
Radical constructivism as proposed by von Glasersfeld implicitly includes a third principle: The first states that knowledge is not passively received but is built up by the cognizing subject. The second principle states that the function of cognition is adaptive and enables the learners to construct viable explanations of experiences and the third: the process of constructing meaning always is embedded within a social setting of which the individual is part.
There are nine general principles of learning that are derived from constructivism. These nine principles according Vermette, Foote, Bird, Mesibow, Harris-Ewing and Battaglia (2001) are:
- Learning is an active process in which the learner uses sensory input and constructs meaning out of it;
- People learn to learn as they learn. Learning consists both of constructing meaning and constructing systems of meaning;
- Physical actions and hands on experience may be necessary for learning, especially for children, but is not sufficient; we need to provide activities which engage the mind as well as the hand. Dewey called this reflective activity.
- Learning involves language: the language that we use influences our learning. Lev Vygotsky, a psychologist that helped in the theory of constructivism, argued that language and learning are inextricably intertwined;
- Learning is a social activity: our learning is intimately associated with our connection with other human beings, our teacher, our peers, our family, as well as casual acquaintances. Dewey pointed out that most of traditional learning is directed toward isolating the learner from social interaction, and towards seeing education as a one-on-one relationship between the learner and the objective material being learned;
- Learning is contextual: we learn in relationship to what else we know, what we believe, our prejudices and our fears;
- One needs knowledge to learn: it is not possible to absorb new knowledge without having some structure developed from previous knowledge to build on. The more we know, the more we learn;
- Learning is not instantaneous: it takes time to learn. For significant learning we need to revisit ideas, ponder them, try them out, play with them, and use them;
- to learn actively;
- to solve problems;
- the process of training to be in an encouraging learning environment;
- to be developed skills for transference of what is learned;
- to be solved different types of real life (authentic) problems;
- old knowledge to be reviewed and used;
- prominence to be given to gaining personal experience and creation of a personal thought;
- attention to be paid to strategies for gaining knowledge, not only to knowledge itself;
- critical thinking to be stimulated.
In the book A Case for Constructivist Classrooms, M. G. Brooks describes the principles of constructivist teaching:
- Encouraging and accepting students’ independence and initiative;
- Interest in knowledge and convictions which students already have about the theme considered;
- While planning their lessons teachers use cognitive terminology and expressions, such as “classify”, “analyze”, and “create”.
- Students are given the opportunity to take responsibility in learning, to substitute instruction’s strategies, and to change the content;
- Welcoming students in the world of contradictions;
- Encouraging the dialogue between teacher and students , and also encouraging discussions between students;
- Organization of students’ activity to be build in such a way which stimulates thinking by means of putting questions which open answer, and encouraging students to ask questions to one another;
- Involvement of students in an experiment that could cause discrepancy between their current and their initial hypotheses, and so a discussion to arise;
- Waiting with patience for students’ answers, and giving enough time to students for building relations and hypotheses;
- Stimulating students’ natural studiousness through using frequently the model of educational cycle: phase of discovering, constructing a new knowledge, putting into practice the new knowledge [3].
Constructivist approach in science training engages teachers and students in active construction of knowledge. Students estimate new ideas and conceptions using terms of their previous notions as they consider the new situation (student-centered) approach.
Brooks and Brooks (1993) present basic prerequisites for realization student-centered constructivist training. As a very important prerequisite they determine the classroom. It should be a proper learning environment where students ask for opinion, estimate, and study. Constructivist idea of a classroom contrasts the typical classroom where students directly get information given by a teacher.
Contemporary constructivism is the basis of student-centered pedagogy for teaching natural science. In the Table №1 below differences between objectivist and constructivist understanding of the learning process are presented [5].
| Objectivist approach | Constructivist approach |
| Knowledge exists outside the individuals and it could be transferred from teachers to students. | Knowledge has a personal meaning. It is individually constructed by students. |
| Students learn what they hear and read. If the teacher explains an abstract conception well, students will learn it so. | Students construct their own knowledge by searching for meaning and relationships of the new thing to what they already know. They interpret what they have heard, read, and seen on the basis of their old knowledge and skills. When students lack proper basis, they won’t be able to „hear“ and „see“ accurately what they are about to learn. |
| Learning is successful when students are able to reproduce what they have learned. | Learning is successful when students can show understanding to what they have learned. |
If we watch a case study based on the constructivist approach we will see how a teacher puts questions and encourages all students to express their opinion. The teacher is positively disposed to students and stimulates them to think independently; the number of instructions and directions which the teacher uses are much less than in a traditional classroom situation. It is important here students to develop their own ideas and thoughts, but not necessarily to find a fixed right answer to the given questions.
In traditional objectivist situation first theory is given and then tasks are set in order acquired knowledge to be put into practice and to be assimilated. In a constructivist learning environment first the problem is put and students study the content of theory in order to solve the problem. This greatly widens the motivation in learning the school subject. In solving the given problem students need support according to the experience they have and according to the concrete case. Here the teacher is an assisting adviser, when is asked to help; teacher is source of information. He or she gives proper instructions according to the context of the problem and gives resources of information and organizes an atmosphere for communication.
Constructivism offers a different understanding for a learning environment. A learning environment is everything that has to do with constructing knowledge about the world. It includes the initial knowledge of the students, the physics learning environment, the learners‘ individual features, the cognitive style of learning, and the relationship between learner and object of learning.
The atmosphere in a constructivist classroom is characterized by mutual respect between teacher and student. In traditional objectivist teaching students should have great respect for teachers. Constructivist teachers respect their students as they give them the right to express their feelings, ideas, and opinions. Teachers do not exercise their rights if it is not necessary. Every student takes part in solving a problem.
In constructivist classroom students work in groups and the atmosphere is interactive and dynamic. A prominence is given to realization of social and communicative skills, and also to mutual aid and exchange of ideas.
- Experimentation: students individually perform an experiment and then come together as a class to discuss the results.
- Research projects: students research a topic and can present their findings to the class.
- Field trips. This allows students to put the concepts and ideas discussed in class in a real-world context. Field trips would often be followed by class discussions.
- Films. These provide visual context and thus bring another sense into the learning experience.
- Class discussions. This technique is used in all of the methods described above. It is one of the most important distinctions of constructivist teaching methods.
Some pedagogues and psychologists are against this approach of learning and their opinions could be arranged in groups considering the following points:
- According to the constructivist theory for constructing knowledge, initial knowledge and experience of students are of a particular importance. If this initial knowledge is incorrect, there is a dangerous probability the newly acquired knowledge to be wrong, and a misguided opinion to be constructed;
- This teaching method lays a stress on team-work, that is why there is a dangerous probability students who are more active and more communicative to be dominant in drawing the common conclusion;
- Because of the specific character of constructing new knowledge (individual or group study of a certain matter, many and different conjectures about the right answer, giving examples of its usage) students who learn in this constructivist way spend much time on the units, and they are late in learning according to the certain syllabus, in comparison with students who learn following the traditional approach;
- According to constructivist theory students are urged to make their own rediscovery of knowledge, which seems very much like “rediscovering the wheel”. They don’t have to discover it, but to learn how to use it and to get acquainted with its functions.
It is important these ideas against the constructivist theory to be known by science teachers to be, who would organize the teaching process on the basis of the constructivist approach, because the constructivist theory should not be taken as perfect. A universal theory that is” panacea “for all problems in the teaching process is impossible. The fact that constructivism has its disadvantages as a theory makes it real and determines its limits of application in the learning process.
Importance of the constructivist theory and respectively of the constructivist approach in science training will grow together with the growth of science social significance. The objective is training of responsible and reasonable people who are able to understand basic scientific ideas and meaning, and the way these ideas are put into practice in technology and in society. This is necessary for these people’s personal progress and learning. The objective is relatively easily achieved if the constructivist approach is used in science training [1].
- Try to tell us about your understanding of constructivism as an approach in science education.
- Which studying principles of constructivism are the most important according to you?
- How is the new role of the teacher in constructivist education expressed?
- What is your understanding of “constructivist classroom”?
- Which types of constructivism you know?
- Describe the constructivist principles of teaching and learning?
In class students discuss their understanding of constructivist theory. They compare traditional education to the one subdued to constructivism. They give examples related to physics education.
- Point out the new role of the teacher in constructivist education as compared to the traditional one.
- Compare the constructivist classroom to the traditional one.
- Describe how you would organize a constructivist study on the subject “Floating of bodies”.
- Choose a topic and write an outline of a case study from the chapter „Reflection of Light"(7th class) organized in a constructivist way.
During the last years constructivism as an approach in education has had a central position in didactical literature. Constructivist theory is definitely accepted as a modern and leading theory in the teaching of science. Constructivism has become the most valuable guiding principle for the teachers of science, as well as for researchers in this field. Constructivist teaching fosters critical thinking and creates active and motivated learners. The constructivist theory has been incorporated into the curriculum, and advocates that teachers create environments in which children can construct their own understandings. There are different types of constructivism: cognitive, social, radical. The following principles of constructivism are important: active construction on the basis of the already exciting conceptions; arrangement of tentative constructor; checking its viability; acceptance of the social character of the construct. Constructivism changes the role of the teacher in the educational process and suggests a new model of teaching environmental.
- If we organize training following the constructivist requirements we should spend much time to learn a unit from the syllabus and then we won’t be able to adhere to the requirements of the whole syllabus. Maybe syllabus should be changed according to the constructivist ideas?
- In a class there are students with different initial knowledge, and that makes the control over their learning activity difficult. Is this (constructivist) approach suitable for all students? How it combines with differential work?
- When I use this approach maybe I need the support of the headmaster?
- Can I use only separate elements of the constructivist approach and still to clam that I teach in constructivist way? Which is the criterion that determines if a training is done in a constructivist way?
http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/pr/constr.html
http://www.uv.es/gil/documentos_enlazados/defending_constructivism.doc
- Duit, R. The constructivist view in science education – what it has to offer and what should not be expected from it, http://www.if.ufrgs.br/public/ensino/N1/3artigo.htm
- Епитропова, А. Активни стратегии в обучението за природата и човек в 1-4 клас, изд. Макрос, Пловдив, 2004
- Vickie, H. Constructivist Learning and Teaching, http://www.maisk-6scienceinquiry.org/teaching.htm
- Mahoney, M. Constructivism growing, http://constructingworlds.googlepages.com/what
- Thanasoulas, D. Constructivist Learning, http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/constructivist.html
- Epstein Maureen Ryan Tricia, Constructivism, Instructor Using Information Effectively in Education Fall 2002, http://tiger.towson.edu/users/mepste1/medialiteracy.htm