ENG505 Grand Quiz Preparation

10. Constructivism-I

•  Constructivism Theory is based on observation (learning philosophy) and scientific study about how people learn (teaching philosophy).
•  The assertion is that the experiences enable people to construct the knowledge of the world around them.
•  Key Features of Constructivism • Learner-centeredness
•  Environment awareness According to Jonassen and Land (2002), context, construction and collaboration are the basis of the constructivist learning.
•  Constructivism has two branches, Cognitive Constuctivism and Social Constuctivism, and emphasizes learner differences, integration of linguistic, psychological, and sociological paradigms.
•  It is not without criticism as critics believe that it advocates tyranny of majority and lacks evaluation process.
•  Key Principles • Learning must be started with the issues around which learners are actively trying to construct meaning. • The learning process focuses on primary concepts, not isolated facts. • Construction of the knowledge, and not the memorization, is encouraged. • Learners must be provided with information on the quality of their learning.
•  Vygotsky has been the key figure who supported Constructivism and introduced his famous theory of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) which explained the distance between learners’ existing developmental state and their potential development.
•  John Dewey, father of experiential education (1930) has been generally recognized as the most renowned and influential American philosopher of education.
•  He propagated that students’ actual life experiences play important role in developing the overall understanding of the world, and traditional educational approach is primarily concerned with only imparting knowledge.
•  John Dewey’s notion of experiential education proposed: • Acknowledging individual differences
• Serves a social purpose • Supports progressive education • Theory of Experience
•  In addition to the notion’s main features, continuity and interaction are two cornerstones of the experiential education as claimed by John Dewy.
•  Experience and reflective thinking also contributes in the experiential education with emphasis on ‘continual reorganization, reconstruction and transformation of experience’ determining effective experience, reflective thinking, learner as explorer, and the perception of relationships in problematical situations, democracy, and education.
•  Sir Frederick Bartlett proposed the theory of ‘Reconstructive Memory and Schema.’
•  He started off with publishing Remembering in 1932, in which he gave an account of his experiments he conducted by following casual data collection methods and recording their anecdotes.
•  Bartlett believed that cognition–perceiving, remembering, and thinking–involves schema.
•  Assimilation and accommodation also contribute in the thinking processes.
•  Repeated reproduction and serial reproduction are the two methods suggested by Bartlett with regard to remembering.
•  His idea of schemas was revisited by Elizabeth Loftus (psychologist), and she claimed when we reconstruct memories, we change them by incorporating new information which we learn after the incident.
•  Later on, the original part of the memory can neither be determined nor retrieved. She also asserted that eyewitnesses are unreliable.

11. Constructivism-II

•  Researchers have been trying to analyze the theory of constructivism in the light of Jean Piaget’s contributions, and believe that Piaget’s concept of cognitive constructivism refers to a cognitive stage where one’s understanding of any new experience is influenced by his/her existing knowledge of a particular experience.
•  The theory relies greatly on schemes, processes of assimilation, and accommodation. It asserts that knowledge is constructed through learner’s participation and not just transmitted.
•  According to Piaget, “What remains is construction as such, and one sees no ground why it should be unreasonable to think it is ultimate nature of reality to be in continual construction instead of consisting of an accumulation of ready-made structures” (Piaget, 1970, pp. 57-58).
•  Piaget emphasized the stages of intellectual development as foundation of acquisition of cognitive content.
•  According to Piaget, reasoning and logic are the essence of intelligence.
•  He proposed the concept of equilibrium based on adaptation which can be achieved by maintaining a balance between assimilation and accommodation.
•  The following four key elements that lead to disequilibrium were proposed by Piaget: • Emotions which create feelings that excite and motivate learning
•  Experience which exposes children to a variety of stimuli
•  Natural maturation that enables learning through physical growth of mental structures
•  Social interaction with parents, other children, and eventually teachers which enables both stimulation and feedback
•  Influenced by Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism, Jerome S. Bruner, psychologist of the twentieth century, proposed Theory of Scaffolding in 1976.
•  The theory is considered to be an influential contribution in the field of education because it proposed scaffolding as vital for all types of learning.
•  It enables a learner to overcome fears and focus on acquiring knowledge.
•  According to Bruner, the goal of education should be directed to learning to learn; therefore, teachers should design curriculum which facilitate rot learning, problem-solving, and learning through discovery.
•  He introduced Discovery Learning Theory (1961) with the following three stages known as stages of ‘Representation’:
•  Enactive: representation of knowledge through actions
•  Iconic: the visual summarization of images
•  Symbolic representation: the use of words and other symbols to describe experiences
•  Jerome Bruner made major contributions in the field of education.
•  He emphasized the concepts of involving learners in the cognitive as well as the constructive processes for meaningful learning.
•  Moreover, learners should be provided with the appropriate assistance where needed.
•  In his interview, Bruner explains that a learner must be encouraged to ‘learn to make a leap,’ and explore ‘possibility.’
•  Instead of being a passive receiver, a learner must learn to question, as intelligence exists in the world of possibilities. Some of his contributions include: • The modes of representation • The importance of teaching and learning ‘optimal structure,’ • The spiral curriculum, • Learning through the acts of discovery

12. Constructivism-III

•  Albert Bandura introduced Social Cognitive Theory which proposed the integration of behaviors, cognitions, and the environment for interaction.
•  The theory advocates that people are not merely concerned with responding or behaving in a specific manner but also seek explanation for information around them.
•  This is what he called a process of self-organizing, self-regulating and self-reflecting.
•  Bandura (1995) proposed the concept of self-efficacy which according to him ‘refers to beliefs in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.’
•  He suggested three scales to measure self-efficacy: • Self-efficacy magnitude • Self-efficacy strength • Generality of self-efficacy
•  Bandura’s Self-efficacy theory enables learners to develop the understanding of one’s capabilities and the factors responsible for it. It explains that high self-efficacy motivates learners to undertake a specific task whereas low efficacy demotivates learners.
•  Parents, peers, and in fact the overall supportive environment can play a positive role in enhancing high self-efficacy.
•  David Ausubel (an American Psychologist) proposed Subsumption Theory for the understanding of learning’s subsumption process.
•  In this process, new information is related to the existing one in the cognition. It consists of meaningful reception of information, four processes for meaningful learning, and advance organizers.
•  The Four Key Principles of Subsumption Theory

Learners should be presented with the most general concepts first, and then their analysis. 2. The instructional materials should include new, as well as previously acquired information. Comparisons between new and old concepts are crucial. 3. Existing cognitive structures should not be developed, but merely reorganized within the learners’ memory. 4. The role of the instructor is to bridge the gap between what’s already known and what is about to be learned.

•  According to John Flavellan, an American developmental psychologist (1979, 1987), metacognition consists of metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experiences or regulation. Metacognition takes into account; thinking of higher order by involving processes of learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress of task completion.
•  Roger Schank and Robert P.
•  Abelson introduced The Script Theory, according to which events are understood in terms of scripts, plans and other knowledge structures as well as relevant previous experiences.