What does constructivism suggest for science education
Issue Paper
Miha Lee
2006 Fall
This paper was my issue paper for SED 625S that was about constructivism for science education.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS THE CONSTRUCTIVIST’VIEW ON LEARNING?
Individual constructivists’views on learning
Social constructivists’views on learning
SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE CONSTRUCTIVIST’PERSPECTIVE
The constructivists’View on the Nature of Science
The Move from Individual Constructivists’Views to Social Constructivists’Views on Science Learning
THE FEATURES OF CONSTRUCTIVISM AND ITS SUGGESTION FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION
Individual Constructivism Shows the Way Conceptual Changes Occur in Science Education.
1. The Importance of Prior Knowledge
2. The Importance of Students’Activities
Social constructivism informs how to make classroom environments effective.
3. The Importance of Contextualization
4. The Importance of Collaboration within Learning Community
5. The Importance of Teacher’s Role in a Classroom
TEACHING AND LEARNING USING COMPUTERS IN SCIENCE CLASSROOMS
SOME CRITIQUES ABOUT CONSTRUCTIVISTS’PERSPECTIVES
CONCLUSION
REFERNCE
INTRODUCTION
What I want to study throughout this grad school program is that "How can I improve my students' achievements in understanding of chemistry concepts and principles?" To find out the answers for this question I have read a lot of research papers and articles and encountered the new term, the constructivism. It’s been 16 years since I graduated from the college of education, Seoul National University in 1990. When I went to the university I learned about Piaget and his cognitive genetics, but I never heard of the constructivism. The constructivism seemed to be related with the conceptual formation of students and motivation. So I thought that the constructivism was valuable to me and wanted to know more about it. My issue paper will focus on the question: what does the constructivism suggest for secondary science education?
In addition, we live in an information age when the Internet access is available any place and any time. I think this Internet has brought a lot of change in our educational system and environments. Textbooks and teachers are not the only and main sources of knowledge any more. And many researchers have been trying to use the computer, the most versatile multimedia tool, in science education. Surprisingly, I hardly find the article dealing with the potential of Internet in science education. Many researches just treat of the computer’s multimedia function as a teaching aid tool. However, I am sure that we are going to need to use the Internet to teach and learn science in the future classroom although I can’t imagine what it will be like. E-learning may show a part of the answer. I think constructivists will find the way to use this Internet as an important educational media. So later in this paper I will suggest the use of computer in a constructivist’s view.
WHAT IS THE CONSTRUCTIVIST’ VIEWON LEARNING?
It is important to review theories of learningbecause they provide conceptual tools to be used by teachers when thinking about teaching.Before exploring the constructivists’ perspectives on science education, I start with constructivists’ general views on learning.
Individual constructivists’ views on learning
One strand of constructivism has its origins in Piaget's genetic epistemology and related cognitive science views. The notion that intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself (Piaget 1937, p.311) reflects that Piaget’s central concern was with the process by which humans construct their knowledge of the world. Piaget postulated the existence of cognitive schemes that are formed and developed through the coordination and internalization of a person’s actions on realities in the world. These schemes evolve as a result of equilibration, a process of adaptation to more complex experiences. New schemes thus come into being and modifying old ones. (Driver et al 1994)
According to this individual constructivist’s view, meaning is made by individuals and depends on the individual’s current knowledge schemes. Therefore, learning occurs when those schemes are changed by the resolution of disequilibration. Such resolution requires internal mental activity and results in development of new knowledge scheme.
If learning is a mental activity that constructs knowledge in learner’s mind, learning is equal to what Perkins (1993) called ‘understanding’. He insists that teaching for understanding is very important because the most basic goal of education is preparing students for further learning and more effective functioning in their lives. However, knowledge and skills in themselves, he argues, do not guarantee understanding, and people can acquire knowledge and routine skills without understanding their basis and when to use them. So building understanding is to become a central element of educational program. (Perkins, 1993)
In sum, understanding means constructing and modifying knowledge schemes in students’ minds. Understanding goes beyond knowing. It requires learners’dynamic mental activities.
Social constructivists’views on learning
The other strand of learning theory has its origins in Vygotskian and neo-Vygotskian psychology. While the individual constructivism places primary on seeing meaning-making as a cognitive process in the individual, the social constructivism focuses on an account of individuals as they function in social contexts. A social constructivist perspective recognizes that learning involves being introduced to a specific cultural community. Bruner (1985) introduced Vygotsky’s work to express this perspective.
The Vygotskian project is to find the manner in which aspirant members of a culture learn from their tutors, the vicars of their culture, how to understand the world. That world is a symbolic world in the sense that it consists of conceptually organized, rule bound belief systems about what exists, about how to get to goals, about what is to be valued. There is no way, none, in which a human being could possibly master that world without the aid and assistance of others for, in fact, that world is others. (Bruner, 1985, p.32)
In this perspective knowledge and its understanding are constructed when individuals engage socially in talk and activity about shared problems and tasks. Making meaning is thus a dialogic process involving persons in conversations, and learning is seen as the process by which individuals are introduced to a culture by more skilled members. So learning makes learners appropriate the cultural tools through their involvement in the activities of this culture. Throughout the learning process, a more experienced member of a culture supports a less experienced member by structuring tasks, making it possible for the less experienced person to perform them and to internalize the process. (Driver et al 1994)
In sum, in social constructivists’ view meaning-making is portrayed as originating in social interactions between individuals, or as individuals’ interactions with cultural products that are made available to them in books or other sources. (Leach & Scott, 2003)
SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE CONSTRUCTIVIST’ PERSPECTIVE
The constructivists’ View on the Nature of Science
Before talking about the constructivists’ view on learning in science education, I have to begin with the nature of sciencebecause the base of the constructivism lies in its view on the nature of science. And as science teachers we have to take into account the nature of science to teach when we decide what and how to teach science.
McComas(1998, p55) insists that scientific laws and other such ideas are not absolute and all knowledge is tentative. He also says that the issue of tentativeness is part of the self-correcting aspect of science. In addition, scientific knowledge is both symbolic in nature and also socially negotiated. The objects of science are not the phenomena of nature but constructs that are advanced by the scientific community to interpret nature. (Driver et al 1994) Actually, if we examine the science history we can find this assertion true in many cases, which Kuhn describes as the shifts of paradigm. In chemistry the model of atom has been changed as new theories came out with more plausible explanations.
Driver et al (1994) argues that the concepts used to describe and model the domains of science are constructs that have been invented and imposed on phenomena in attempts to interpret and explain them, often as results of considerable intellectual struggles. As a result, the symbolic world of science is now populated with ontological entities; it is organized by ideas and encompasses procedures of measurement and experiment. These ontological entities, organizing concepts, and associated epistemology and practices of science are unlikely to be discovered by individuals through their own observations of the natural world. Scientific knowledge as public knowledge is constructed and communicated through the culture and social institutions of science. (Driver et al 1994)
The view of scientific knowledge as socially constructed and changeable has important implications for science education. It means that when we teach science, we should foster a critical perspective on scientific culture among students. We should teach the limitation of scientific knowledge and its application as social products.
The Move from Individual Constructivists’ Views to Social Constructivists’Views on Science Learning
According to Piagetian perspective, learning science is seen as involving a process of conceptual change. And Individual view on learners’ knowledge seems to be entities on person’s head with such terms as cognitive scheme or conceptual structure (von Glasersfeld 1999 p. 12).
At the beginning of a paper entitled 'What changes in conceptual change?' diSessa & Sherin (1998) introduce their mental structure model in terms of an '. . . image of a network of nodes, each of which corresponds to a concept, with the nodes connected by links of multiple types' (p. 1155). Some possibilities for conceptual change are then presented, such as the addition or deletion of nodes, and changing links between nodes in learners’ mental structures.diSessa and Sherin's approach represents the view of individual constructivism on conceptual change which emphasize on individual mental activity,making little or no reference to external factors such as cultures that might influence or drive conceptual change to the individual.
However, Leach & Scott pointed that it is not possible to explain how teaching enables students to reach new understandings by focusing upon their 'mental structures' in isolation from the situations in which that 'mental structure' is used. A considerable attention should be given to how features of the social environment might influence the mental functioning of individuals in that environment. (Leach & Scott, 2003)
Moreover, Driver et al (1994) argues that there is a significant omission from individual constructivists’ perspective on knowledge construction. Developments in learners’ cognitive structures are seen as coming about through the interaction of these structures with features of an external physical reality, with meaning-making stimulated by peer interaction. What is not considered in a substantial way is the learners’ interactions with symbolic realities, the cultural tools of science.
Consequently, social constructivists assert that to construct knowledge beyond personal empirical enquiry, learners should be given access to the knowledge system of science, that is, the concepts and models of conventional science. Social constructivists agree that insights about students' 'mental structures' are useful in explaining why science is difficult to learn for many students. However, in their view such insights are not enough to explain how students learn science in classrooms. Consideration of the social environment through which students learn scientific ideas is necessary. In fact, many individual views on science learning refer to how the social environment might influence learning (Driver et al, 1994; Leach & Scott, 2003).
In addition, in a social constructivists' perspectivethe intended products of science learning (i.e., science concepts) are cultural. They cannot generally be perceived by individuals, they are validated through complex empirical and social processes, and they are used within scientific communities for particular purposes. Therefore, scientific knowledge can only be learned through some process of social transmission. (Leach & Scott, 2003)
In social constructivists' view, moreover,given the situation with so many students in a classroom, teachers can hardly plan instructions to address each student's momentary and individual development. In order for research to inform science teachingit is necessary to theorize the relationship between teaching and learning, rather than focusing upon individuals with no reference to the learning environment. Therefore, much consideration should be given to how the knowledge to be taught is introduced in the social environment of the classroom, and how individual students become able to use that knowledge for themselves. (Driver et al, 1994; Leach & Scott, 2003)
THE FEATURES OF CONSTRUCTIVISM AND ITS SUGGESTION FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION
The constructivism provides a perspective on teaching and learning science in classrooms, with a view to improving the effectiveness of science teaching in enhancing students' learning. The core view of constructivists on learning science suggests that students construct their knowledge strongly influenced by social environments. They learn science through a process of constructing, interpreting and modifying their own representations of reality based on their experiences. Therefore, constructivists acknowledge social dimension of learning such as the classroom and learning community whereby students make meaning of the world through both personal and social processes. (Driver et al, 1994; Kearney, 2004)
In short, according to constructivism the most important thing in science teaching and learning is providing students with learning environment that promotes theirunderstanding of science by co-constructing and negotiating ideas through meaningful peer and teacher interactions. (Solomon, 1987)
Individual Constructivism Shows the Way Conceptual Changes Occur in Science Education.
1. The Importance of Prior Knowledge
In terms of individual constructivism, students are supposed to build their new knowledge based on their prior knowledge. In this perspective on learning, in order to predict how learners will respond to attempts to teach science it is necessary to understand their preinstructional knowledge, the knowledge that students bring to a given teaching situation. (Leach & Scott, 2003)
Students come to science classrooms with a range of strongly held personal science views. So teachers should have insights about students' preinstructional knowledge to use in their instructional designs. Information about students' characteristic ways of thinking and talking about the world is potentially useful in preparing teaching. For example, student performance can improve when instruction is designed to deal with specific difficulties revealed in studies of students' preinstructional knowledge. (Savinainen & Scott 2002) Therefore, the elicitation of students’ preinstructional knowledge helps teachers to identify common alternative conceptions and to design subsequent episodes in order to cause cognitive conflicts of students.
In brief, the teaching sequence should be designed on the basis of a detailed conceptual analysis of the science to be taught and students' typical preinstructional knowledge. Through this analysis, curricular goals can be identified and teaching activities designed and evaluated. (Leach & Scott, 2003)
Besides, once students are asked to elicit their ideas about science phenomena, they have an opportunity to articulate and clarify their ideas and to be motivated to find the correct science views. To probe students’ prior knowledge, inquiry-based learning and POE strategy can be used. In the inquiry-based learning students are supposed to make ahypothesis before exploring the world. To create a hypothesis, students need to clarify their prior knowledge putting their ideas in words. Likewise, in a POE task students should make predictions about the result of a demonstration. To make a prediction, students need to articulate their previous ideas expressing their ideas.
2. The Importance of Students’ Activities
From the individual constructivist’s view point teaching approach in science education should focus on providing learners with physical experiences that induce cognitive conflicts and hence encourage them to develop new knowledge schemes that are better adapted to experience.
When students are given opportunities to actively construct their knowledge of a discipline, deep understanding is more likely to develop (Krajcik et al., 1998; Roth, 1994) Perkins (1993) argued that engaging students in thought-demanding performances provides opportunities that promote deep understanding. This performance perspective suggests that students construct knowledge by engaging in learning activities that require them “to explain, muster evidence, find examples, generalize, apply concepts, analogize, and represent in a new way” as they create new understanding that builds on their prior knowledge. (Perkins, 1993, p.29)
The emphasis of activities means to me two things: student-centered teaching and laboratory –centered teaching. At the center of instructional activities are students. Teacher can introduce new knowledge and skills to students, but it is the students that construct them in their minds. So teacher-centered teaching does little good in students’ learning processes. Activities such as performance of experiments and discussion about the results with peers can help students to build understandings.
Activity does not need to be only experiments in a laboratory. However, in secondary science education the knowledge and concepts are so complicated that many controlled activities are required to perform to explain their meanings. And during laboratory work students have opportunities to learn the procedure and skills that are facilitating conceptual changes.
Needless to say, other activities also play important roles in teaching and learning science. Any activities in which students cognitively and actively engaged can help conceptual changes take place. In a study only a sciencetextbook was used as teaching material, but students’ active reading resulted in not only acquiring new knowledge but also changing concepts. So students are to be prepared to reflect on and reconstruct their conceptions in order for conceptual change to occur.
Social constructivism informs how to make classroom environments effective.
3. The Importance of Contextualization
Actively constructing knowledge or engaging in a performance of understanding requires that learners become immersed within the context of the discipline (Roth, 1994). Perkins (1993) argues that grasping what a concept or principle means depends in considerable part on recognizing how it functions within the discipline. Such disciplinary contexts provide situations within which novices can learn through increasingly autonomous activity in the presence of social and intellectual support. (Singer, Marx, and Krajcik, 2000)
Social interaction is a critical component of situated learning -- learners become involved in a "community of practice" which embodies certain beliefs and behaviors to be acquired. As the beginner or newcomer moves from the periphery of this community to its center, they become more active and engaged within the culture and hence assume the role of expert or old-timer. Furthermore, situated learning is usuallyunintentional rather than deliberate. These ideas are called the process of "legitimate peripheral participation." (Lave & Wenger, 1991)