Constructivism in Practice

Through our resources, we learned that constructionist learning is when the student is actively engaged in creating or building something that forces them to assimilate and accommodate knew knowledge into their schema. By using technology such as spreadsheet software and PowerPoint, students are creating an artifact that facilitates higher order thinking skills. They must synthesize, analyze, problem-solve and make decisions, and then when students share their artifact, they are forced to articulate the concepts they have learned, all of which uses higher order thinking skills and are a fundamental aspect of the constructionist learning theory.

Using web resources, especially web-based simulation or simulation software, allows students to manipulate in way that otherwise might have been impossible or not financially feasible. As I shared in my discussion, I used web-based simulation of muscles contracting and relaxing to show students how muscles work to create movement. In this simulation, they were able to manipulate the muscles and rotate a 3-D image of the muscles to see how movement is related to contracting and relaxing muscles at different angles. We also explored a simulation of a frog dissection to compare and contrast human and frog muscles.

When we began the unit, students made hypothesis about how they thought muscles worked. As we progressed through the unit, students reevaluated their hypothesis, testing them against their new knowledge and revised them as needed. Along with revising their own thinking, they came up with new questions and were encouraged to explore to find their answers. Some students needed guidance in finding their answers, while others worked eagerly at constructing their own knowledge and sharing it with the class. I feel in a constructionist role, the teacher is more of a facilitator, both guiding and learning from students during the process.

Cognitivism in Practice

We learned from Dr. Orey that one of the key principals of cognitive learning theories is information processing. How well we remember information is based on how deep, or how many connectors, we make with the information. Long-term memory, which is the goal of teachers, is a network of memory. Paivio’s theory is that we have a dual coding process. Images are easier to remember than text and when we remember the images, we also remember the label and possibly other senses such as smell. Dr. Orey’s discussion of Elaboration reminds me of association, which is how I learned to remember different facts for tests in high school. In using elaboration, we create more connectors to the memory thus deepening the memory so that we can recall the connection to the memory when needed. Forgetting doesn’t mean we don’t have the memory, it means that we loss the connection to the memory. Memory can be one of three different types:

            Declarative – facts

            Procedural – how to do something

            Episodic – events in our life

Episodic memory is the most powerful, so anything that we as teachers can do to create these kinds of memories will be a powerful teaching tool. This is where I believe the relationship between Cognitive Learning Theories and the instructional strategies lie.

Cognitive tools, such as advance organizers, cues, questions, note-taking and summarizing serve as a mind-extension. Short-term memory is only able to remember 7 (+/- 2) new pieces of information at once. Summarizing and note-taking (which is just short bits of information on the main idea and sub-ideas) simplifies the information to weed out irrelevant information.Therefore, by simplifying through summarizing or note-taking we reduce the amount of information to process. Using cues and questions guides us to the connectors of the memory . Finally, using advance organizers, such as concept mapping, we are visually representing the organized network of memory, which, in turn, helps us to remember the specific concept.

Behaviors, Effort and Homework/Practice

In reading the assigned chapters of Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, we learned two types of instructional strategies that are related to the behaviorist learning theory. In order to understand the relationship, we must understand the principles of behaviorist learning theory.

From a behaviors perspective, learning is a result to external experiences and the reaction or feedback that they receive from it; reinforcement or punishment. Reinforcement is related to positive responses and reinforces the subject to repeat the action. It is also the most powerful response. Punishment is then related to negative responses and reinforces the subject not to repeat the action. The intent is to have the demonstrated behavior of interest to go down.

Prior to the technology boom, Skinner developed programmed instruction based his work of operant conditioning. In this system, small amounts of information were presented to students in small steps. Feedback to whether responses were correct was immediate and learning was individualized, self-paced, and self-selected. This style of learning declined in popularity by the late 1960s. However, in the advent of microcomputer technology, software and multimedia programs are available for student use and many embrace the principles of the behaviorist theory.

One strategy related to behaviorist theory of learning is reinforcing effort. I believe that anyone in education knows that effort is related to success, but I don’t know how many teachers really teach about or track students’ effort as presented in Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. As a substitute teacher, I find that it is not something that I would be able to do, but after reading this chapter, I feel that it is something absolutely to do that is necessary and is directly in line with explicit teaching that our schools are asking us to do today. Making students understand the why is very important, and teaching this even from kindergarten sets the path for student success.

As a substitute teacher, I do find that I look for ways to positively reinforce students. I often try at all costs to avoid using punishment in classroom management situations as this has often caused power struggles with students and I feel that less time on task occurs. When a student acts up, I try to find a way to positively reinforce the situation. For example, if a student is behaving inappropriately, say talking in line, I will thank those that are demonstrating appropriate behavior and as soon as the student(s) that are misbehaving are quiet, I immediately thank them.  I do see that when I positively reinforce students the students are more receptive to doing what I am instructing them to do. This response reinforces the behaviorist theory of the power of positive reinforcement.

Homework relates to behaviorist learning theory. Homework is practice and practice is paramount to operant conditioning. Having immediate feedback is the key as students can easily make errors and begin to internalize incorrect practices.