Diane Brackman

EDIT 6320, Fall 05

Constructivism versus Instructivism Teaching Methods

Lord, Thomas R. (Spring 1999). A Comparison Between Traditional and Constructivist Teaching in Environmental Science. Journal of Environmental Education. Available at http://web5.epnet.com/deliveryprintsave.asp?tb=1%

ABSTRACT

The article by Lord was an explanation of an experiment comparing traditional teacher-centered (instructivism) and student-centered (constructivism) classes. The two methods of instruction were compared in a non-laboratory-based environmental science course for college undergraduates. Students in 2 teacher-centered (traditional) classes were presented material in standard lecture fashion for 90 minutes twice a week. There were approximately 90 students in each group. Students in 2 student-centered (constructivist) classes worked in small, heterogeneous groups on thought-provoking scenarios and critical thinking questions or constructed concept maps on the information of the day; material was presented to the students in question-discussion fashion. Identical materials, learning resources, student questionnaires, and examinations were used for both populations. Students in constructivist classes performed significantly better on exams, rated the course higher and participated more in campus and regional environmental support efforts than students in traditional classes.

Since there are many versions of constructivism, the researcher in this case used a well-tested model of constructivism designed by Rodger Bybee which has five instructional phases: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate. According to Bybee (1993), the Engage phase is used to motivate the class in the topic; the Explore phase encourages the students to examine the topic in small groups; the Explain phase allows them to describe to other members in the class what their team has discovered; the Elaborate phase permits the students to expand on the topic; and the Evaluate phase provides the students a means of assess what they have learned.

The mean test scores of the constructivist-taught population were several percentage points higher than the scores of the control population on all the unit exams. There was a difference of 9 points on the first exam, an 11-point difference on the second, and a 15-point difference on the third. The results suggest that the students in the student-centered group has much better understanding of the information covered in those units than did students in the teacher-centered group.

Answers on the student questionnaire brought other insights about the constructivist methods. More than 80% of the students in the student-centered population indicated that they found the class interesting and enjoyable. Most of the comments in the student-centered course were very positive; however, a few had negative comments and didn’t like the method. “I don’t feel constructivism was developed with college classes in mind. I like it better when you sit and take notes on what the professor is saying.” Another student said “We seemed to cover material this semester at a much slower pace than normal. The team activities really slowed the lecture down. We’re college students and are capable of learning much more than we did about environmental facts and issues.” The other group found the class very hard and overly exacting. And their comments were not mixed; half of the students did not bother to comment on the course; 5 wrote they liked the class.

Halavais, Alex and Hernandez, Pedro. (Dec, 2004). Blogs, Threaded Discussions Accentuate Constructivist Teaching. Online Classroom. Available through Magna Publications Inc.

ABSTRACT

There is also a constructivist idea that learning is largely social and that people learn better when they learn with someone else. Hernandez-Ramos had each student in his face-to-face course “Instructional Technology for Teachers” create a simple, text-based blog using the free version of Blogger.com. He had each student send him the blog’s URL, and he gave them a rather open-ended assignment: post at least one reflection per week on teaching, learning, and technology.

The threaded discussions were more structured. Students were asked to provide “timely and insightful” responses to three discussion questions during the semester.

By using these modes of communication in the course, Hernandez-Ramos introduced his students to tools that could potentially open up new avenues of communication. “The quality of collegial interaction in most schools is quite poor, so it was encouraging to see how these kinds of technology-based tools can help engage in meaningful conversations with peers.

Katz, Lillian G. (1999). Curriculum Disputes in early childhood Education. ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education. Available at http://web32.epnet.com/deliveryPrintSave.asp?tb=1&

ABSTRACT

From the teacher-centered (instructivist) viewpoint, the young child is seen as dependent on adults’ instruction in the academic knowledge and skills necessary for a good start for later academic achievement. This viewpoint is in direct contrast to the active and interactive curriculum assumed by proponents of the constructivist approach. This Digest considers instructivist and constructivist approaches to early childhood education and suggests that attention to children’s intellectual development may inadvertently be overlooked by both sides. Project work is suggested as a way that young children can express their intellectual dispositions in the pursuit of serious topics, apply their emerging and academic skills, and generate high-quality products. The Digest proposes that the early childhood curriculum be structured so that it is focused on at least a trio of goals: (1) social/emotional development; (2) intellectual development and (3) the acquisition of meaningful and useful academic skills.

After years of observing early childhood classrooms it is suggested that both sides under- emphasize and undervalue a third option – namely, curriculum and teaching methods that address children’s intellectual development as distinct from the instructivist emphasis on academic learning and the constructivist emphasis on children’s play ad self-initiated learning. Believing that children “construct their own knowledge”, some adults do little more than set out a variety of activities that children enjoy, while studiously avoiding formal instruction in basic academic skills.

An appropriate curriculum addresses strengthening and using the intellectual dispositions, offers good processes about rich content, and results in high-quality products. For these reasons, many teachers have been incorporating project work into the curriculum. Project work not only provides contexts for the intellectual dispositions involved in the investigations that children undertake, but it also provides texts and pretexts for children to make meaningful use of the academic skills they are taught during the “instructive’ part of the curriculum.

REFLECTION (on Constructivism vs Instructivism)

I guess the Constructivist viewpoint was pointed out to me as being a “discipline free” scenario many years ago by my mother who was pretty much a stay-at-home mom. She would occasionally substitute at the local middle school. My mom is the sweetest and probably most gullible person in the world and mostly, I’m sure, the students would take advantage of her and would be wild while the “sub” was there. She would sometimes substitute for the “typing” teacher and she would come home singing the praises of that class. The students were engaged in typing and would stay busy typing and didn’t present the un-orderly conduct that the other classes did. Even though we didn’t know the terms of student or teacher centered, this class was basically a student-centered class and each person was responsible for producing work.

I excelled in typing and shorthand while I was in high school, even though I was a “college-prep” student, and my Business Teacher was one of my favorite teachers. So I ended up majoring in Business Education. I’ve always felt that I have never had many discipline problems in my computer-based classroom because of the fact that the students were always engaged. I have taught classes like Economics and Personal Finance (but not in recent years) and I found it more difficult to make the lesson hands-on and interesting for the students.

When I take training classes as an adult, I know I learn more in a constructivist style classroom. When I sit still for too long, I find myself getting sleepy. I think the small group discussions are ideal because it gives everyone a chance to talk and discuss the topics. When I was a college student in the 70’s, most of the teachers lectured and you were expected to take notes. I especially remember taking a lot of notes on Western Civilization History. I would literally memorize the material for the test because it was essay. I would spit it up for the test and forget the material afterward. I don’t remember any of the history today even though I made an A for the course.

Norcross High School has mandatory training for the teachers on making our classes more constructivist (learning-focused) in nature. We have planning period meetings periodically where I have learned to create lesson plans that incorporate such features as the KWL Strategy whereby the students complete sections of a sheet of paper indicating “what we Know” (K), “What we want to find out” (W), and “what we Learned and still need to learn” (L) The “ticket out the door” is a sheet the student hands you as his pass out the door indicating a question or idea that is running around in my head; it could also be one fact they learned that day. The concept map has a place for definition of the “question” or word, as well as a spot for characteristics, examples and non-examples. I experimented with these elements in my Video class and it was much more effective than lecturing. The material we covered was things like the correct way to phrase Interview Questions. I needed them to be able to remember the interview techniques (not just spit it up for a test). There are a few students that don’t attempt to “get” any new material. I wonder if some of them aren’t on recreational drugs!!! I also found “modeling” to be an effective way of communicating or “getting” to them. I had a VCR of a professional interview and I pointed out some techniques that were used in the film. I also had a taped interview session that a group of students had done in a previous year and 4 of the 5 students did a good job of asking “thought-provoking” questions but the 5^th student did a good job of asking the “wrong” type of questions and they enjoyed seeing the results of asking inappropriate questions. The student asked a lot of yes/no questions which don’t work well for an interview. It was kind of an “aha” moment.

Another “moment” that rewarded this teacher was when I was teaching spreadsheets to a group of students, we did a spreadsheet that involved an Invoice for services at a mock car repair station. Suddenly, an ESOL student who was taking auto mechanics at Maxwell looked at me and said “Wow, I could use this!” This particular student had failed the section of the class on word processing and to think he could “use” this spreadsheet made it relevant to him.

Even though I know student-centered learning is definitely the way to go, I also think it is more work on the teacher. It takes a lot of preparation to create the lesson plan so as to engage the student. It is especially perplexing to the teacher who has 4 or 5 preparations per day. It is also asking a lot of the new teacher who is teaching the subjects for the first time. Perhaps if teachers had less preps, it would be more feasible. I believe some of the subject matter teachers may only have one preparation and in that case, it would be the ONLY way to go.

I found the article on blogs and threaded discussions interesting for use in an “on-line” course. It seems like my professor is putting these ideas to the test. It must be working OR you would not continue its use. I can only reflect on the results after the course is finished since this is my first on-line class. I did find the first week’s discussions interesting. The Tuesday night session was much more in-depth and moved quickly from topic to topic whereas Thursday night’s session was much slower and dwelled on the same topic for a long time (it seemed). I wondered if that group was not as “technology-comfortable” because there were questions about keeping spreadsheets on the computer and being able to e-mail progress reports to parents and this is old hat for us in Gwinnett County.

Project Based Learning

Beglau, Monica. (2005). Q&A: Director of the eMINTS National Center Discusses Philosophy behind Collaborative Education Program, Impact of Project-Based Learning. THE Journal at Professional Development Collection.

ABSTRACT

The philosophy of the eMINTS program is based on transforming teaching using inquiry-based methods and strategies powered by technology. The eMINTS program seeks to help teachers use technology in ways that change student engagement and student products through high –quality professional development and in-classroom support. It can be assessed at www.emints.org.

Project-based learning allows teachers to help students make the vital connections between subject disciplines in ways that give students opportunities to learn about multiple subjects while completing a single project. Students also retain comprehension of these concepts longer and are able to apply them to other life situations.

Hargis, Jace, Ph.D. (2005) Collaboration, Community and Project-Based Learning—Does it Still Work Online? Int’l J of Instructional Media. Available through Westwood Press Inc.

ABSTRACT

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a method of teaching that engages the learner in finding solutions to important questions that are interesting and can be carried out through a process of investigation and collaboration. This paper addresses PBL in the on-line environment. An ideal communal online environment has involved into various forms of virtual communities.

“Two heads are better than one” is alive and well in education. PBL typically involves five aspects, including a driving question, investigation, collaboration, technology and an artifact. In a PBL classroom, students discuss, collaborate and try out their ideas and challenge the ideas of others. Telecommunications allow students to interact with a wider community of other students, and outside science experts to share information, data, resources, and ideas.

Research is showing that just because the logistics of placing a course online works doesn’t mean that learning takes place. Creating a learning experience is hard. The best scenario is to have a virtual community of learners that are motivated but finding the appropriate motivators can be challenging.

Helm, Judy Harris. (2004). Projects That Power Young Minds. Educational Leadership; Sep2004. Available at http://web1.epnet.com/DeliveryPrintSave.asp?tb=1%

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on project-based learning for young children. Project-based learning is an excellent way to make learning meaningful for young children because this is a period of rapid intellectual growth. By the age of 4 children have a developed a complex, interconnected knowledge base about the world and how it works.

Quality does count, however and the project must contain rich, meaningful learning experiences for children. It should lead to higher-level thinking (questioning, hypothesizing and predicting), not just to factual recall. Sometimes you have to present the material and let the students’ interest lead you to the appropriate level of symbolic thinking. One example was a project on the question, “what things have corn in them”? The students got so interested in this question that one student woke their mom to go to garbage to see if the pizza had corn in it that they had that evening. An example of “rich” topics was given. If you did a unit on teddy bears, the concept can integrate into size and shape and provide a subject for literacy activities. A project on real bears, however, integrates these same concepts with in-depth understanding of living things, their habitats, and geography—foundational understandings for science study.

REFLECTION (on Project-Based Learning)

I see the point of project based assignments. It gets the student to thinking. After having a group of students make databases from the book and doing queries on the database, it makes much more sense when they do a database that they can use in their life. It could be a list of people to invite to graduation from high school, a list of their collection of music, or a list of restaurants to choose from in the area. I think the projects work best when everyone is responsible for their own results. Perhaps a group in which they can discuss their concerns or questions about the assignment would be good but I like the assignments where each person has to turn in a project.

I have had great success with projects in teaching presentation software, desktop publishing, spreadsheets and databases. These projects were mostly individual projects. Last year, in preparing for Industry Certification at my school, I did a group project with making a presentation in PowerPoint. I also was forced to have lots of group projects in the video class just due to the nature of the curriculum. Perhaps I don’t do a good job of dividing the students into teams. I have done it several different ways over the years; i.e. let the students put themselves in groups, randomly chosen them, placed a “leader” with each group, etc. But to no avail, none of these methods has worked any better than letting the students choose their own group. (and I don’t have to hear them complain about their group members) It always seems that one or two of the students do most of the work on the project. Being a teacher that believes in fairness, I have a problem with this.

In talking to colleagues who are also graduate students and hearing from my own children, it seems like this is the case in most instances. You have a portion of the people in the group that don’t want to do anything! It doesn’t seem fair to give them the same grade as those who did the work. After the group project is complete, I usually let the students complete a form that explains what grade they think they deserve and they can defend that grade by telling me what they did on the project. There is also a place on the form for them to list their group members and tell what grade they deserve and what they contributed to the project. With high school students, sometimes they are honest and sometimes they give everyone a hundred percent (even though you know some of them did nothing).

But, in retrospect, group work is preparing our students for the world of work where everyone doesn’t always pull their own weight, either! And learning to get along with others and make decisions as a group is also a life skill.

Resource-Based Learning

Armantax, Christine and Holt, Dale and Rice, Mary. (2003). Impacts of an Online-Supported, Resource-Based Learning Environment: Does One Size Fit All? Distance Education, Vol. 24, No. 2. Available through Ebsco Publishing.

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on the use of an online, resource-based learning approach in first year psychology. There was a comparison between on and off-campus students. The on-campus group were less positive about working with computers and reported confusion about how and what to study for the unit whereas the off-campus students felt confident they had a good study strategy and were more positive about computers. While all students valued the prescribed resources, the off-campus students found some of the optional, electronic resources valuable because they added to the learning experience. These findings highlight the fact that the learning environment needs to be designed, structured and delivered so the learning experience can be customized to the needs of different student cohorts.

Resource-based learning offers learners the capacity to “depend far more on materials, and far less on face-to-face teaching, than they do in other types of learning systems. It demands that students actively engage with multiple learning resources with well-articulated educational purpose.

REFLECTION

I think the success rate in resource-based learning boils down to several factors. The online resource-based course must have students who are motivated, comfortable with computers, organized, and interested in the subject matter. They have to be willing to “dig” for resources. They have to be comfortable with searching for information. It seems like the older student is more likely to have these qualities than the student right out of high school.

I know that my high school students lack the maturity to handle a resource based learning environment. They are so accustomed to be being spoon-fed that they would have trouble making the transition. They are comfortable with computers (most of them) but lack the motivation and interest in the subject matter to develop the know-how to learn in this environment.

In thinking about resource-based learning more, I realize that it could be a history class that is using the Internet to find valuable information and I feel this would be the ideal situation for the Media Specialist to work with the history teachers and create a curriculum map that could help the MS create some resources for the teacher to use. Finding and dissecting the information from the Internet is a challenge and also contributes to the student becoming a “lifelong learner”.

Webquests have become very popular and I have used them with some of my classes. But I wonder if, while they provide the websites to search, the students find the information you want them to find which I suppose is a “plus”. I feel like the high school student should learn to “find” the resource and develop the skills to decide IF the site is valid and pertinent. Perhaps webquests were made popular because you don’t want your students to spend too much time looking for the “right” article that pertains to the material. But I think open-ended assignments where the student gets to do their own searching has its advantages to learning.