The Constructivist group Audiobook presents a brief overview of constructivism with an in-depth review of the use of Inquiry-based Learning in the classroom. A concept map of Constructivism illustrating its three major instructional strategies:Inquiry-based learning, project based learning and service learning is included in the presentation.
constructivist audiobook download
3 comments:
In several occasions the audio book did not followed the concept map provided for the listeners.
Well done Contructivist group. Your audiobook was beautifully organized, easy to follow, and informative. I particularly liked Michael's delivery; good pace and clear.
I also liked that you focused on IBL rather than try to explain the entirety of Construcivism. At the same time, you very nicely placed IBL within the context of Constructivism. If I were being exposed to this topic for the first time, I would feel I received a good solid overview of the topic including strengths, weaknesses, and critiques of the Constructivist philosophy.
Some questions:
I was not sure why some arrows were present on some nodes in the graphic organizer and not on others. Minor point.
There were 2-3 places in the script where the audiobook and the concept map diverged. I would need to go back to the audiobook to give exact instances . . . again, a minor point.
Overall, I enjoyed your presentation very much. Well done.
As someone who has taken courses on constructivism (not at USF, but at SFSU), I have my own issues around constructivism and its critics--so take what I say with that in mind.
Constructivists and adherents to other schools of educational thought use a lot of loaded language to criticize teaching using lectures, examples, and practice (first by calling this type of teaching traditional or passive). Also, there is a high focus on integration of knowledge and "real-world" assessments at the expense of having knowledge recall and the ability to solve problems in context. Solving word and test problems has a lot in common with solving statistical problems in research design and other applied contexts, but to read some of the constructivist literature you would never know this. My personal experience in teaching using constructivist-only curricula is that students usually suffer from a lack of practice and a lack of fluency which is needed for the development of advanced skills. Somewhere in the middle is where I think educators eventually find themselves (as I have), where I use a blend of constructivist materials for students to develop deep conceptual understanding of content and more "traditional" materials for students to develop procedural knowledge and skill fluency.
OK, enough of my soapbox. (Thanks for reading that bit and putting up with my pontifications.)
As to the audiobook, I wonder about dividing constructivism into IBL, PBL, and service learning as separate areas. Seems like PBL and service learning are both sub-categories of IBL, which is really the heart of constructivism. As for the diagram connections, I wonder about the following:
1) Why is there an arrow connecting "motivates students" with "interaction," but no arrows elsewhere?
2) I would probably connect "engages students" with "choice" based on literature I read in Mathew's motivation class.
For newbies to constructivism, it would probably be good to explain more fully the different between the concepts "student-centered" and "teacher-centered." I might also look for some additional research on this. It makes me think of the situation described as "mindless manipulatives" in math instruction where students are following a constructivist lesson/activity using manipulatives to work on algebra, but they are only active in a physical sense, not a cognitive sense. Some students may appear inactive physically when doing traditional seatwork when they are quite active cognitively. Perhaps we should be aware that in some situations what appears to be student and teacher centered may not be so.
Overall, a nice intro to constructivism--just remember that I'm picky and I have my own particularly opinionated views about it. Your group has made a nice intro for newbies to constructivism.
-Shannon
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