Hi. Thank you for joining me for an introduction to constructivist-based teaching and learning strategies. By the end of today's tutorial, we'll be able to answer the following questions. What is constructivist teaching and learning? What are the elements of a constructivist classroom, and how can I use constructivist strategies in my own classroom?
So what exactly is constructivist learning and teaching? It's a theory that students learn by constructing or creating their own meaning. This is a learner-centered theory as students are given a voice in their learning. Teacher provides content knowledge, and then the teacher also facilitates student inquiry-based learning activities. And students use various inquiry methods, such as creating new meaning, problem-solving, and a transfer of understanding.
So what does a constructive is based classroom look like? We're going to go over several indicators for a constructivist-based classroom. And when we do our example lesson in a little bit, we're going to talk more in-depth about what this looks like. So these are just the main bullet points. A constructivist based classroom has strong student engagement.
The learning tasks and activities are relevant and authentic. The classroom environments and learning experiences require collaboration and communication. Students are given opportunities to have voice and choice in their learning. And students own learning and construct a new meaning.
Students transfer their new understanding to different situations to solve new problems in different contexts. Learning tasks require higher order thinking skills. Students are engaged in inquiry, and students learn and understand varied perspectives. Students also reflect on their learning.
If you remember, higher order thinking skills has a lot to do with Understanding by Design and Bloom's Taxonomy. And reflecting on learning as well as understanding varied perspectives connect to Marzano's High-Yield Instructional Strategies. So let's look at an extended example of a lesson plan in a constructivist classroom. And we're going to look at every single one of those indicators and see how they are incorporated in this lesson.
So this lessons focus is on world geography, and the objective is students will trace their ancestry and make determinations regarding their family's immigration to the US. Students must address two of the following areas, one, their family's role in the political climate of the US at the time of immigration, two, their family's home country's political climate at the time of immigration, three, the family's reason for immigration, four, the history of the area in the US where the family originally immigrated, and a tracing of the history leading their family to their current location. As students may choose a visual presentation to accompany their oral presentation, the technology that we're using in here is going to be in terms of the presentation and also in the research.
We're not going to require that these students go to a library and necessarily look up primary documents, although primary documents are definitely encouraged for this assignment. But we're going to use technology to help us with this assignment. So students might choose to present it using a slide show, or they might make a movie. Or they might do a poster board or a scrapbook, and the technology that they use will be helping them with their research. So let's go by step by step and see what this looks like in a constructivist classroom.
So we're going to start with strong student engagement. Engagement is strong for this lesson because students are researching their own families. And they have choice, which is always going to make students more engaged. They also have the ability to use technology, which is definitely appealing to students in the 21st century.
Learning tasks are relevant and authentic. This is definitely a relevant and authentic task because the students have explored both home countries and immigration patterns in the past. And now they're applying them to their own lives.
Collaboration and communication. This actually does exist because students who have families from similar home countries or whose families immigrated during the same era or to similar regions in the US are actually allowed to collaborate for this assignment. As students are given opportunity to have choice in learning activities, they are given the opportunity to have choice in two ways. One, they can choose two out of the four aspects to research and present, and, two, they can choose any visual representation to include in the oral presentation. They also can choose anything they want for research purposes.
Students own learning and construct new knowledge. Students are doing this with this lesson because they're owning their learning as it is meaningful to them because it's based on their own heritages. And students do construct new knowledge because they make judgment calls about their families' immigration to the US based on their research and knowledge from their world geography class.
Students transfer their new understanding to different situations to solve new problems in different contexts. So students can now use their understanding of their families' immigration to make judgments about immigration patterns to the US and immigration patterns from different countries, et cetera. So what I mean by that is they might be able to say if their family immigrated to the US during the potato famine from Ireland and they posed a question as to why a family immigrated to the US from Ireland during that same era, they're going to be able to use their new understanding of that to say, oh, well, maybe it's because the same reason my family immigrated.
Higher order thinking skills are definitely used in this lesson because students are applying research skills. They're analyzing them, and they're analyzing and evaluating their family's immigration patterns based on their findings. And students are creating visual and oral presentations.
So they're analyzing. They're applying. They're creating. They're doing a lot of higher order thinking according to Bloom.
Students are engaged in inquiry. Students are engaged in inquiry because they are making inquiries into their cultural and familial heritages. And this, again, goes back to Marzano's High-Yield Instructional Strategies when we talk about the scientific method and inquiry in the classroom.
Students learn and understand various perspectives. Students appreciate various perspectives as they study their heritages and as they learn about their fellow students heritages. So this is a really important aspect because it adds empathy to the student.
Students reflect on their learning by synthesizing their findings and creating a way to present it to the class. Let's reflect for a moment. Do you think your classroom is a constructivist classroom? If so, explain. If not, what are some steps you can take to transform it into a constructivist classroom?
Today, we talked about what is constructivist teaching and learning? What are the elements of a constructivist classroom? And how can we use constructivist strategies in our own classroom? I hope this was helpful for you and happy teaching.
As you reflect on how this new information can be applied, you may want to explore the additional resources section that accompanies this video presentation. This is where you'll find links to resources chosen to help you deepen your learning and explore ways to apply your newly acquired skill set. Thanks for joining me, and happy teaching.
Overview
(00:00-00:18) Introduction and Essential Questions
(00:19-00:45) Constructivist Learning and Teaching Defined
(00:46-01:57) What Does a Constructivist Classroom Look Like?
(01:58-06:16) Extended Example
(06:17-06:24) Reflection
(06:25-07:27) Conclusion
Constructivist Teaching and Learning
This site is the result of a Master's thesis by Audrey Gray that explores constructivist teaching and learning in an English Language Arts classroom. The information provides an authentic look at one teacher's implementation of constructivist teaching and learning. The link for the classroom example of constructivist teaching is particularly helpful.
https://saskschoolboards.ca/wp-content/uploads/97-07.htm
Transforming Constructivist Learning into Action: Design Thinking in Education
This article from Design and Technology Education emphasizes improvement in student learning when design thinking with a constructivist approach is taken in the classroom. In the body of the article are useful strategies backed by research for teachers to use in their lessons and instructional design.
http://ojs.lboro.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/DATE/article/view/1758