Constructivism
Last Week: Cognitivism
Cognitive
Constructivism
Cognitive Constructivism
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Learning is an active process: Direct experience, making
errors, and looking for solutions are vital for the assimilation and
accommodation of information. How information is presented is
important. When information is introduced as an aid to problem
solving, it functions as a tool rather than an isolated arbitrary fact.
Learning should be whole, authentic, and "real": Piaget helps
us to understand that meaning is constructed as children interact
in meaningful ways with the world around them. Thus, That
means less emphasis on isolated "skill" exercises that try to
teach something like long division or end of sentence
punctuation. Students still learn these things in cognitive
constructivist classrooms, but they are more likely to learn them if
they are engaged in meaningful activities (such as operating a
class "store" or "bank" or writing and editing a class newspaper).
Jerome Seymour Bruner
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Born October 1, 1915
Age 94
Born in New York, New
York
cognitive psychologist
and educational
psychologist
Scaffolding Theory
Spiral Curriculum
Theory of Instruction
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Learning is an active process in which learners
constructs new ideas or concepts based upon their
current/past knowledge.
The learner selects and transforms information,
constructs hypotheses, and makes decisions,
relying on a cognitive structure to do so.
Cognitive structure (i.e., schema, mental models)
provides meaning and organization to experiences
and allows the individual to "go beyond the
information given".
Theory of Instruction
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As far as instruction is concerned, the instructor
should try and encourage students to discover
principles by themselves.
The instructor and student should engage in an
active dialog (i.e., Socratic learning).
The task of the instructor is to translate information
to be learned into a format appropriate to the
learner's current state of understanding.
Curriculum should be organized in a spiral manner
so that the student continually builds upon what
they have already learned.
Scaffolding Theory
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He used the term to
describe young children's
oral language acquisition.
Helped by their parents
when they first start
learning to speak, young
children are provided with
instinctive structures to
learn a language. Bedtime stories and read
alouds are classic
examples
Spiral Curriculum
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Instead of focusing for
relatively long periods
of time on specific
narrow topics, a spiral
curriculum tries to
expose students to a
wide varies of ideas
over and over ago.
Jean Piaget
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Born 9 August 1896
Died 16 Sept 1980
Born in Neuchâtel,
Switzerland
Swiss psychologist and
philosopher
He laid great
importance to the
education of children
Key Ideas
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Schemas – categories of knowledge
A schema describes both the mental and physical actions
involved in understanding and knowing. Schemas are categories
of knowledge that help us to interpret and understand the world.
In Piaget's view, a schema includes both a category of
knowledge and the process of obtaining that knowledge. As
experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add
to, or change previously existing schemas. For example, a child
may have a schema about a type of animal, such as a dog. If the
child's sole experience has been with small dogs, a child might
believe that all dogs are small, furry, and have four legs.
Suppose then that the child encounters a very large dog. The
child will take in this new information, modifying the previously
existing schema to include this new information.
Key Ideas
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Assimilation - adding to an existing schema
The process of taking in new information into our
previously existing schema’s is known as
assimilation. The process is somewhat subjective,
because we tend to modify experience or
information somewhat to fit in with our pre-existing
beliefs. In the example above, seeing a dog and
labeling it "dog" is an example of assimilating the
animal into the child's dog schema.
Key Ideas
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Accommodation - changing an existing
schema
Another part of adaptation involves changing
or altering our existing schemas in light of
new information, a process known as
accommodation. Accommodation involves
altering existing schemas, or ideas, as a
result of new information or new experiences.
New schemas may also be developed during
this process.
Key Ideas
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Equilibration - balancing between assimilation
and accommodation
Piaget believed that all children try to strike a
balance between assimilation and accommodation,
which is achieved through a mechanism Piaget
called equilibration. As children progress through the
stages of cognitive development, it is important to
maintain a balance between applying previous
knowledge (assimilation) and changing behaviour to
account for new knowledge (accommodation).
Equilibration helps explain how children are able to
move from one stage of thought into the next.
The four development stages
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Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2. Children experience
the world through movement and senses (use five senses to
explore the world). During the sensorimotor stage children are
extremely egocentric, meaning they cannot perceive the world
from others' viewpoints.
Preoperational Stage: from ages 2 to 7 (magical thinking
predominates. Acquisition of motor skills). Egocentrism begins
strongly and then weakens. Children cannot conserve or use
logical thinking.
Concrete operational Stage: from ages 7 to 12 (children begin
to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking). Children
can now conceive and think logically but only with practical aids.
They are no longer egocentric.
Formal operational Stage: from age 12 onwards (development
of abstract reasoning). Children develop abstract thought and
can easily conserve and think logically in their mind.
Other forms of
Constructivism
Constructivism
Constructivism
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humans generate knowledge and meaning from their
experiences.
Social Constructivism encourages the learner to arrive at his or
her version of the truth, influenced by his or her background,
culture or embedded worldview.
Historical developments and symbol systems, such as language,
logic, and mathematical systems, are inherited by the learner as
a member of a particular culture and these are learned
throughout the learner's life.
This also stresses the importance of the nature of the learner's
social interaction with knowledgeable members of the society.
Lev Vygotsky
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Born Nov 17 1896
Died June 11, 1934
Bron in Orsha, in the
Russian Empire (today
in Belarus).
a Soviet psychologist
and the founder of
cultural-historical
psychology.
Cultural Mediation and Internalization
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Vygotsky investigated child development and how this was
guided by the role of culture and interpersonal communication.
He observed how higher mental functions developed historically
within particular cultural groups, as well as individually through
social interactions with significant people in a child's life,
particularly parents, but also other adults.
Through these interactions, a child came to learn the habits of
mind of her/his culture, including speech patterns, written
language, and other symbolic knowledge through which the child
derives meaning and which affected a child's construction of
her/his knowledge.
This key premise of Vygotskian psychology is often referred to as
cultural mediation.
Psychology of Play
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Vygotsky's also undertook a great deal of
research on play, or children's games, as a
psychological phenomenon and its role in the
child's development. Through play the child
develops abstract meaning separate from the
objects in the world, which is a critical feature
in the development of higher mental
functions.
Zone of Proximal Development
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Vygotsky’s term for the range of
tasks that are too difficult for the
child to master alone but that can be
learned with guidance and
assistance of adults or more-skilled
children.
The lower limit of ZPD is the level of
skill reached by the child working
independently.
The upper limit is the level of
additional responsibility the child
can accept with the assistance of an
able instructor.
Scaffolding is changing the level of
support. Over the course of a
teaching session, a more-skilled
person adjusts the amount of
guidance to fit the child’s current
performance
John Dewey
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Born Oct 20, 1859
Died June 1, 1952
Born in Burlington,
Vermont
Philosopher,
psychologist, and
educational reformer
Very influential to
education and social
reform
The Reflex Arc Concept
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In Dewey's article "The Reflex Arc
Concept in Psychology" which
appeared in Psychological Review
in 1896, he reasons against the
traditional stimulus-response
understanding of the reflex arc in
favor of a "circular" account in which
what serves as "stimulus" and what
as "response" depends on how one
considers the situation.
While he does not deny the
existence of stimulus, sensation,
and response, he disagreed that
they were separate, juxtaposed
events happening like links in a
chain.
He developed the idea that there is
a coordination by which the
stimulation is enriched by the results
of previous experiences.
Reflective Thinking
Reflection as a meaning-making process;
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Moves the learner from one experience to the
next with deeper understanding of its
relationships with and connections to other
experiences and ideas.
The thread that makes continuity of learning
possible.
It insures the progress of the individual, and,
ultimately, society.
It is a means to essentially moral ends.
Experiential Learning Model
On Education
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Dewey was an educational reformer, who emphasized that the
traditional teaching's concern with delivering knowledge needed
to be balanced with a much greater concern with the students'
actual experiences and active learning.
At the same time, Dewey was alarmed by many of the "childcentered" excesses of educational-school pedagogues who
claimed to be his followers. In How We Think, Dewey wrote;
“The older type of instruction tended to treat the teacher as a dictatorial ruler. The newer type
sometimes treats the teacher as a negligible factor, almost as an evil, though a necessary one. In reality,
the teacher is the intellectual leader of a social group, He is a leader, not in virtue of official position, but
because of wider and deeper knowledge and matured experience. The supposition that the teacher must
abdicate its leadership is merely silly.”
Maria Montessori
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Born August 31, 1870
Died May 6, 1952
Born in Chiaravalle
(Ancona), Italy
Physician, educator,
philosopher, humanitarian
and devout Catholic
best known for her
philosophy and the
Montessori method of
education of children from
birth to adolescence
Montessori Method
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an educational approach where children are
given freedom in an environment prepared
with materials designed for their self-directed
learning activity.
The purpose of which is to bring about,
sustain and support children’s true natural
way of being ("the child's true normal
nature").
The Three-Period Lesson
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Period 1 consists of providing the child with the name of the
material. In the case of letter sounds, the teacher will have the
child trace the letter and say, "This is u. This is p." This provides
the children with the name of what they are learning.
Period 2 is to help the child recognize the different objects. Most
of the time with the three-period lesson is in period 2. Some
things the teacher might say are, "Show me the u. Show me the
p” or "Point to the u. Point to the p.” After spending some time in
the second period, the child may move on to period 3.
Period 3 involves checking to see if the child not only recognizes
the name of the material, but is able to tell you what it is. The
teacher will point to the "u" and ask the student, "What is this?" If
the child replies with, "uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu", the child fully
understands it. With letters, the lesson finally ends with the child
blending the letters to make a simple word, such as “up.”
Planes of Development
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The natural development of children proceeds through several distinct
planes of development, each one having its own unique conditions and
sensitive periods for acquiring basic faculties in the developmental
process.
The first plane (ages 0-6) involves basic personality formation and
learning through physical senses. During this plane, children
experience sensitive periods for acquiring language and developing
basic mental order.
The second plane of development (6-12) involves learning through
abstract reasoning, developing through a sensitivity for imagination and
social interaction with others.
The third plane (12-18) is the period of adolescent growth, involving
the significant biological changes of puberty, moving towards learning a
valuation of the human personality, especially as related to experiences
in the surrounding community.
The fourth plane (18+), involves a completion of all remaining
development in the process of maturing in adult society.
In America
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After the 1907 establishment of Montessori's first school in
Rome, by 1917 there was an intense interest in her method in
America in large part due to the publication of a small booklet
entitled "The Montessori System Examined" by William Heard
Kilpatrick - a follower of John Dewey.
Confusion and conflict about the method's philosophy emerged
with particular intensity in the modern development of Montessori
in the United States where, in 1967, the name "Montessori" was
held to be a "generic term" that no organization could claim for its
own exclusive use. Since then, the number and diversity of
Montessori organizations and philosophies have expanded
considerably.