CONSTRUCTIVISM​ 0.5

• The constructivist teacher always encourages and accepts and encourages students’ initiatives.

• Constructive teachers use raw data and primary resources, raw data, and physical materials with manipulative interactive collective information. 

• Teachers frame new tasks, using cognitive terminologies which classify, analyze, predict, evaluate, and create new ideas with conceptual notes.

• Constructivist teachers allow students to respond to instructional strategies with content. 

• Teachers inquire about student knowledge and understanding of the concepts. 

• Constructivist teachers encourage student interaction and dialogue, with teachers and students. 

• Teachers increase student inquiry by asking thoughtful, open mind questions and increase students to ask questions to each other.

• Constructivist teachers seek elaboration and elicit student responses. Engage students in an experience that might engender contradictions to their initial hypothesis and encourages discussion.

• The teacher allows students to pose questions.

SKILLS REQUIRED FOR TEACHER:

1. A facilitator of teaching and learning must be warm, understanding, and self-controlled with enjoyment.

2. The teacher engages, listens attentively, and accepts children’s concerns and ideas with emotions.

3. Constructivist teachers must note students’ skills.

4. As facilitator ask open-ended questions to the students and also praise and encourage their abilities for planning and execution of work.

5. The teacher must deliver the things clearly and reward to them fairly.

6. When the teacher criticizes a student, he/she must give the reason for critics.

7.Teacher must encourage classroom discussion, panel discussion, linear program, branched program, and interaction and group sessions, demonstrate and explain with examples.

8. The teacher must encourage independent study habits, characteristics, and achievements. That leads to students’ emotional security and inculcates freedom in various learning activities.

The Comparison Between Traditional to the Constructivist One.

     After compare constructivism with behaviorism and cognitivism. The next is the comparison between traditional and constructivist classroom when we compare from curriculum, teacher, students, materials, and assessment (Brooks and Brooks , 1993)

TRADITIONAL CLASSROOM

1. a)      Curriculum begins with the parts of the whole. Emphasize basic skills

2. b)      Strict adherence to fixed curriculum is highly valued

3. c)      Materials are primarily textbooks and workbooks

4. d)     Learning is based on repetition

5. e)      Teachers disseminate  information to students, students are recipients of knowledge

6. f)       Teacher’s role is directive, rooted in authority

7. g)      Assessment is through testing, correct answers

8. h)      Knowledge is seen as inert

9. i)        Students work primarily alone

CONSTRUCTIVIST CLASSROOM

1. a)      Curriculum emphasizes big concepts, beginning with the whole and expanding to include the parts.

2. b)      Pursuit of the student questions and interest is valued

3. c)      Materials include primary sources of material and manipulative materials

4. d)     Learning is interactive, building on what the student already knows

5. e)      Teachers have a dialogue with students, helping students construct their own knowledge

6. f)       Teacher’s role is interactive, rooted is negotiation

7. g)      Assessment includes student works, observations and points of view, as well as tests. Process is as important as product

8. h)      Knowledge is seen as dynamic , ever  changing with our experiences

9. i)        Students work primarily in groups

MERITS OF CONSTRUCTIVISM:

1. All students participate, are involved in the teaching-learning process, and learn more and enjoy, rather than passive listeners.

2 Constructivism concentrates on learning “how to think” and understand. It implies thinking and understanding rather than rote memorization.

3 It is a transferable learning mechanism in a constructivist classroom. Students themselves create, and organize principles and carry them to other learning settings.

4. Students become free to learn, as it is based on students’ questions and explorations. Constructive evaluation engaged the students, initiatives, and personal investments in their general, research, and artistic representation. Constructivism’s creative instinct develops students’ abilities to express their knowledge and transfer it to the real world.

5. Students in constructivist classrooms learn activities in a real-world context; it encourages and engages them to apply their natural knowledge to the world. 

6. Constructivism always promotes social and communication skills by creating a classroom environment that emphasizes collaboration and exchanges new ideas.

7. Each student constructs their ideas as well as collaborates on tasks effectively by sharing in the group projects. Also, Student evaluates their contributions in a socially acceptable manner.

8. The student remembers the concepts and retains them for a longer time.

 Hence the students cover issues like independent intimacy of individuals, peer group, and also dependence, concerns that the need to recognize and support the outside world.