Class #1

Monday, September 2nd, 2019

What is constructivism?

Constructivism is basically a theory -- based on observation and scientific study -- about how people learn. It says that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with our previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge. To do this, we must ask questions, explore, and assess what we know. 

In the classroom, the constructivist view of learning can point towards a number of different teaching practices. In the most general sense, it usually means encouraging students to use active techniques (experiments, real-world problem solving) to create more knowledge and then to reflect on and talk about what they are doing and how their understanding is changing. The teacher makes sure she understands the students' preexisting conceptions and guides the activity to address them and then build on them. 

Constructivist teachers encourage students to constantly assess how the activity is helping them gain understanding. By questioning themselves and their strategies, students in the constructivist classroom ideally become "expert learners." This gives them ever-broadening tools to keep learning. With a well-planned classroom environment, the students learn HOW TO LEARN.
You might look at it as a spiral. When they continuously reflect on their experiences, students find their ideas gaining in complexity and power, and they develop increasingly strong abilities to integrate new information. One of the teacher's main roles becomes to encourage this learning and reflection process. 

For example: Groups of students in a science class are discussing a problem in physics. Though the teacher knows the "answer" to the problem, she focuses on helping students restate their questions in useful ways. She prompts each student to reflect on and examine his or her current knowledge. When one of the students comes up with the relevant concept, the teacher seizes upon it and indicates to the group that this might be a fruitful avenue for them to explore. They design and perform relevant experiments. Afterward, the students and teachers talk about what they have learned, and how their observations and experiments helped (or did not help) them to better understand the concept.

Contrary to criticisms by some (conservative/traditional) educators, constructivism does not dismiss the active role of the teacher or the value of expert knowledge. Constructivism modifies that role so that teachers help students to construct knowledge rather than to reproduce a series of facts. The constructivist teacher provides tools such as problem-solving and inquiry-based learning activities with which students formulate and test their ideas, draw conclusions and inferences, and pool and convey their knowledge in a collaborative learning environment. Constructivism transforms the student from a passive recipient of information to an active participant in the learning process. Always guided by the teacher, students construct their knowledge actively rather than just mechanically ingesting knowledge from the teacher or the textbook.

Constructivism is also often misconstrued as a learning theory that compels students to "reinvent the wheel." In fact, constructivism taps into and triggers the student's innate curiosity about the world and how things work. Students do not reinvent the wheel but, rather, attempt to understand how it turns, how it functions. They become engaged by applying their existing knowledge and real-world experience, learning to hypothesize, testing their theories, and ultimately drawing conclusions from their findings. 

The best way for you to really understand what constructivism is and what it means in your classroom is by seeing examples of it at work, speaking with others about it, and trying it yourself. As you progress through each segment of this workshop, keep in mind questions or ideas to share with your colleagues. 

Cognitivism

Cognitivism focuses on the mind, and more specifically, mental processes such as thinking, knowing, memory, and problem-solving, with the goal of opening the “black box” of the human mind, the process of which is deemed valuable and necessary for learning to occur. Knowledge is approached as schema constructions, and learning is viewed as a change in the learner's schemata or the redefining of prior knowledge.

Key Concepts: Mind as a "Black Box" Learning is explained as a "recall" of stored information Instruction usually grabs the attention of learners and helps make sense of the information so it can be stored more readily stored (learned) later for recall.

Key Words (and Definitions)

• Schema Theory is defined as a mental representation of something is previously known, including actions, events, and perspectives. These are the building blocks of knowledge.
• Gestalt Theory states that perceptions are entirely dependent upon the whole and not of the individual parts. All of our understanding is built upon whole objects, events and not of their small parts.
• Equilibrium is the state in which our minds exist before we learn something new. The process, called "adaption" by Piaget flows as follows:
     Equilibrium-->New Situation/Schema-->Disequilibrium-->Accomodation-->Assimilation

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Applications in Educational Technology

The best way for a teacher to approach using cognitivism in the classroom is to ask questions to help students refine their thinking and recognize where they may be wrong. You want to approach topics that they may think they already know and introduce some new aspects to make them redefine something. Alternately, for entirely new topics, you want to draw upon background knowledge before you challenge existing ideas (schema) and create learning toward amplification or change of those schemata.

Some great examples of Cognitivism in educational technology can be found in online games and reinforcement activities, such as sorting games, puzzles, and flashcards. These games will often present prior knowledge schema in a different method, thus creating disequilibrium and a need to adapt and learn the new information in order to continue. For example, the online resource Quizlet creates a means of listing vocabulary, pictures, and even mathematical procedures and then taking that list and producing several ways of practicing the previously known schemata, including the incorporation of audio and video.