Constructivsim

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.

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.

Constructivism is a theory about how people learn. It is encouraging students to use active techniques in learning. This is a very interactive theory, it has a lot to do with children, especially some special needs students may just need to be completely interactive for them to stay well behaved and understand the lesson you are teaching. Not only is it useful for hands on learners and some special needs students, it could be useful for a lesson after lunch, when students are restless, and they don’t really want to work. Students may also think that because it is interactive they don’t have to work as hard, but really they are because it gives them broadening tools to keep on learning in life. Constructivism teaches students how to learn, they are continuously reflecting on their own experiences and they find their learning capacity is increasing as they develop strong abilities to integrate new information. As a teacher I believe this approach would be especially useful in senior classes, ICT classes, drama, and art classes. For myself as a want to be Business Studies teacher the senior classes, a constructivist classroom would be very helpful. I could teach them life skills, not only that but skills they would need to learn to work in the business environment.