Learning Theory Article #1

Gordon, Mordechai. "Toward a Pragmatic Discourse of Constructivism: Reflectiosn on Lessons from Practice." Educational Studies 45 (2009): 39-58.

This article gives an overview of the teaching idea of constructivism. The exact idea of constructivism has many different definitions, depending on the theorist. However, all constructivist theories revolve around the idea that knowledge is not independent of human knowledge or free of value. This means that knowledge is something that humans create, not discover. Thus, the role of teachings should be to facilitate student creation of this knowledge. Knowledge is not something that is learned from a text-book, it is built through student actions and interactions. Thus, teachers need to be aware of how knowledge is created, if they wish to use practices that are must conducive to having their students become knowledgeable. Now, this article shows that there are many different theories about how the idea of Constructivism actually plays out in the classroom. The ironic thing is that it concludes by asking for a constructivist discussion about how to use constructivism. It doesn’t give out any specific answers about how to use constructivism or what form it should take, but he does think that the knowledge of constructivism is still under construction.

As for the classroom, I find the idea that knowledge is created to be very applicable. Students need to have a part in creating their own knowledge, they need to be invested in the material and applying it to their own lives. It is very similar to the differences in pedagogies competition we did for an earlier group work. One group actually constructed knowledge through a play, while the other group simply learned the story through direct instruction. This is one way in which Constructivism can lead to better student internalization of the knowledge. Since, they created the knowledge they actually will retain that knowledge. Another good use of constructivism is inquiry based learning. The students will need to discover their learning objectives. This is very student centered as raises the question of how much knowledge of the material the teacher really has to know. These are all very interesting ideas to how to improve learning in the classroom.