ED4134 Week Two: Social Constructivism

Week Two presented itself as a successful opportunity to become a member of the Teacher Learning Federation. Here, my fellow cohorts and myself were able to explore a variety of teaching methodologies and idea’s of learning experiences. I was intrigued and found this website a useful tool for my present and future teaching techniques. This website can be found at: http://econtent.thelearningfederation.edu.au/ec/p/home 

This weeks text was “Translating Constructivist theory into practice in primary-grade Mathematics”, by Jody Brewer, and its research was based on interviewing 8 maths teachers on their views of constructivism and to see if their views mirror their teaching methods. Prior to reading the article, I researched social constructivism for my own understanding of the concept and found interesting notions on the theory. Firstly, I found social constructivism was a variety of cognitive constructivism that emphasizes the collaborative nature of much learning. Furthermore, social constructivism was developed by Vygotsky who was a cognitivist and argued that all cognitive functions originate in, and must therefore be explained as products of, social interactions and that learning was not simply the assimilation and accommodation of new knowledge by learners; it was the process by which learners were integrated into a knowledge community. (Theories of Learning Social Constructivism, 2008). Therefore, constructivist teaching effectively supports students to manufacture and construct knowledge using their prior knowledge and respective environment around them to create new understanding. I found the beginning of the article most profoundly eye opening. Firstly, it is important to note that despite individuals referring to themselves as ‘constructivist teachers’, they do not completely attain full understanding and knowledge of the implications of constructivist teaching methodologies. A significant extract from the article in which I feel is the pinnacle notion of the social constructivism concern;

A video i found to reflect the article which discusses the foundations of building knowledge through constructivist learning is;

The students are structured by the teacher to aid their learning process and learn through peer interactions. Each of the teachers interviewed collectively encompassed similar values and ideas of the respective methodologies on constructivism and what it entails. The four main notions on the teachers perceptions of constructivism these were a) learning is an active, constructive process, (b) new knowledge is built on prior knowledge, (c) autonomy is promoted, (d) social interaction is necessary for knowledge construction and active learning. In particular, two parallel analysis and observations of teachers expressed social constructivism as the “knowledge comes from within the children. The students construct it instead of the teacher being the holder of knowledge and giving it to the children”. This reference presented itself as a noteworthy and valuable understanding for me as it explores student’s prior knowledge and their ability to use it to construct newly acquired meanings. However, it is in my opinion students should be guided by teachers modeling and scaffolding some relative understanding of presented topics to aid in the construction of knowledge. In support of this, on teachers parallel perspective maintained this notion as they stated as “You take what you know and you take what you don’t know and from your perspective you try to learn what it is you don’t know and how it makes sense to you.” Therefore, by having a teacher modeling and instigating the construction of knowledge for their students- students are able to implement their prior knowledge into social settings and thus effectively collaborate to gain new knowledge. In addition, autonomy was encouraged and supported by all eight teachers as to not limit their students into exercising a single method to solve a problem, but be able to consider a broad span of differing factors. Thus this view of constructivism appears very effective in a classroom learning environment as students are able to construct their own way of learning collaboratively. Moreover, teachers assumed and felt required to collaboratively share ideas and obtain criticism and analysis from varying sources as it elucidates and develops their own way of thinking.  As a result, educators must necessitate to “start thinking about their own teaching and ideas about teaching” (Christiansen, 1999) and there will be no limitation to the potential for development in students.

A Soundclip in which i found to represent my reflection to this entry ABC 123 

Week Two Reflection Questions: