Merz 1

Anna Merz

Reading Diagnostics

Professor Katie Elmore

24 November 2014

Building Success:

Constructivism at Work

Teachers in schools around the country are being held, more and more, to standards of “accountability” in their classrooms. While this doesn’t immediately sound like a negative development for the education systems in the United States, these accountability programs are holding teachers responsible for circumstances out of their control in ways that can affect other students’ learning in the classroom. While I am no expert on teaching, I would assume that many teachers are struggling to find ways to tackle these new, difficult expectations and still teach in ways that are effective and helpful for the students in their classrooms. After exploring constructivist teaching methods through both textual research and one-on-one experience with a child, I am even more convinced that these methods are applicable to teachers looking for practical, child-centered, effective teaching methods to use in the teaching environments of today. Constructivism’s individualized “building-block” approach to learning allows children to expand on knowledge that they already know in ways that make learning truly meaningful for each child. Constructivism and its application-based, hands-on methodology makes learning an enjoyable, thoughtful task for both teachers and students; a process I have been able to both participate in and observe in action.

In George W. Gagnon and Michelle Collay’s book Designing for Learning: Six Elements in Constructivist Classrooms,the authors both help to explain the term “constructivism” and apply it to educational philosophy. Gagnon and Collay state that “Constructivist refers specifically to the assumption that humans develop by engaging in the personal and social construction of knowledge. We humans make personal meanings for ourselves and we create shared meanings with others. Thus, humans construct knowledge; we do not receive and internalize predigested concepts without simultaneously reacting to them and engaging them within our own mental maps and previous experiences”(x). A constructivist approach to thinking, or the constructivist theory, according to Gagnon and Collay, basically asserts that individuals grow and learn best by participating in an active learning environment in which they can engage both personally and socially in order to build on their current knowledge. As humans, our best learning happens when we can build new ideas onto prior knowledge of other concepts by actively participating in a learning process.

Of course, this may seem to many like common sense, but Gagnon and Collay point out that many educators do not follow these guidelines or understandings about humans in their teaching, but instead “sign[] the Faustian pact to search only after the qualities and techniques of authoritarian, direct instruction” (x). Gagnon and Collay are pointing out that student-centered active learning techniques are actually relatively new approaches to teaching. In fact, they say that “for most of the 20th century, educational practices have been driven by behaviorist psychology” and “cognitive psychology [] emerged during the second half of this century” (xv). Therefore, teachers in our most recent past were taught with the idea that learning is only happening if you can test it and receive positive results. The new constructivist ideas challenge these more “static” notions of knowledge and learning and, as we have seen above, assert that gaining knowledge is a “dynamic” and developing process that involve constructing knowledge for the individual which may be different for each person. These ideas are certainly a huge step in a new, and better, direction for both students and educators.

With this change in mind, it might be helpful to take time and study one application of constructivist ideology to the field of education, and its effect on students. The Constructivist Learning Design (CLD) was created with “six basic parts flowing back and forth into one another in the actual operation of classroom learning: situation, groupings, bridge, questions, exhibit, and reflections” (xi). A quick summary of each of these parts shows us that the “situation” is the agenda for the student which includes learning goals; “groupings” are the social structures in which these goals will be achieved; “bridge” refers to the reminder that teachers will give students about a topic that will help them to access prior knowledge; “questions” help students to extend their knowledge and communicate with others about it; “exhibit” asks students to show others what they learned in a social setting; and “reflections” give students and teachers the ability to think and speak critically about their learning (xi). Each of these basic parts work together in the CLD method to help provide structures within which students can critically explore new ideas by accessing prior understanding of similar subjects.

To illustrate an example of CLD in action, I would like to discuss an experience I created with students Jay and Daniel during my time at South Salem as I participated in the Reading Diagnostics requirement. My lesson plan for the day involved working with a book of poetry for children called “A Kick in the Head” and like I mentioned previously, I was working with Jay and Daniel who are both first-graders identified as struggling readers. To begin my lesson, I established my “situation” for the day by pulling out the poetry book (which is thicker and heavier than other picture books we worked with this semester), and by explaining that we would be working with a new kind of book and a new way of writing today. I explained that we would be reading some of this new kind of writing, and that by the end of the lesson we would understand it so well that we would be able to do some of this writing ourselves. My grouping, or social structure, for this lesson was very informal. Jay, Daniel, and I sat on the floor in a circle so that we could all see the book and we were each able to chime in with questions and ideas throughout my lesson. We worked together for most of the lesson, but at the end, Jay and Daniel produced poetry of their own individually without the help of peers. The bridge, or access to prior knowledge, that I used occurred when I asked Jay and Daniel to each look at some other, randomly chosen, picture books that I had brought. We talked about these books each having one story in them; each of the books having pictures that showed the story; each of the books being pretty light—not hard to carry or lift. Then I began my “questions” part of the lesson. I asked if either of them had ever read poetry before, or looked at a book of poems. They each said no, so I asked them to flip through the book of poetry I brought. I asked them questions like, “do you notice one story, or do you see lots of small pieces of writing?”, “do these pictures look like they all go with just one story?” and “does this book have more pages or less than the other books we have read?”. Jay and Daniel and I began to notice differences between the two “picture books” because of our answers to the previous questions, and to ones like them. We read some of the poems, and together, we decided that poems are much shorter than entire stories, but they can still be just as important. We decided that poetry books can have lots of different poems in them, which means lots of different short things you can read. We came to the conclusion that poems can be funny just like stories, but that they can also be serious. After building on our prior knowledge about the kinds of things authors might write, we each wrote an acrostic poem to “exhibit” our new ideas on poetry. Afterwards, in our “reflections” time, we talked about what we learned and decided that poetry is hard to write, and sometimes hard to read, but that it can still be fun to work with.

Although the CLD method isn’t the only teaching method that utilizes constructivist ideology, my experience with it, and my experiences working with students when we build on prior knowledge, has been positive. Of course, things don’t always go perfectly smoothly, but with Jay and Daniel, our lesson on poetry ended very positively and each of them were able to tell me about poetry and the new ideas they had about it weeks after our initial discussion. It seems clear to me that the child-centered active learning methods that occur with the CLD method and other constructivist teaching methods are very helpful ways to both teach and learn. Students are able to grasp new concepts by accessing ideas that they have worked with before. Methods like the CLD allow teachers and students to work together to make school meaningful and the classroom fun.

Works Cited

Gagnon, George W., and Michelle Collay.Designing for Learning: Six Elements in Constructivist Classrooms. Thousand Oaks: Corwin, Calif., 2001. Print.