Sunday, April 8, 2012

Constructivism vs Objectivism


                Objectivist teaching seems to be a standard style of teaching.  The teacher stands in front of the classroom with authority.  The teacher then gives a presentation over what the student should be learning, and then puts a question to the student to see if they understand the material.  If the student is right, then they are rewarded.  If the student is wrong, then the presentation is repeated until the student understands and remembers the material.  This instruction style rewards being correct and punishes being incorrect.
 
                Constructivist teaching seems to be a more creative way of teaching in that the teacher is actually teaching the students “how to learn.”  In this style of teaching, the teacher becomes a master of ‘the question.’  The question is posed so to bring students to think critically upon previous experiences of their own to form an appropriate response.  Rewards are not given on being correct or incorrect, but on engaging in learning the material based off of the material they already know.  In this way, the student becomes equipped at learning through guidance of their own knowledge.

 
                As a future teacher, I find that both styles are important.  In language arts, sometimes rules are rules such as in regard to grammar.  However, I like the concept of building off of what the student already knows.  If I were to teach constructively, then I could allow students to learn grammar off of sentences they already know and understand.  I could have my students guess what they find to be a correct sentence before displaying what the rules are.  Maybe memorization isn’t the key?  Language arts would be a great field to engage in constructivist teaching because there is already so much creativity allowed.  Even in teaching novels, instead of posing questions testing whether the students read the text, I could ask them questions that brought the themes of the novels to real world problems.  I could engage the students in the text based off what they have already learned in their daily lives.  I would like to put learning in the hands of the students, and teach them how in many ways, they are their own teachers.

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