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Constructivism in Instructional Design: Putting Learners First
- 1. Constructivism: A perspective on instructional design
- 2. Learning: Behaviorism Cognitive information processing Materials: Instructional Objectives 1 teacher Technology: Limited resources Linear media Instructivist instruction
- 3. Traditional assumptions about learning learners as passive receivers of information learning strengthens bond between S R learners are blank slates knowledge is independent of context transfer is predictable training by abstraction works part-task training works
- 4. “Objectivists believe in the existence of reliable knowledge about the world. As, learners, the goal is to gain this knowledge; as educators, to transmit it. Objectivism further assumes that learners gain the same understanding from what is transmitted (…) Learning therefore consists of assimilating that objective reality. The role of education is to help students learn about the world. The goal of designers or teachers is to interpret events for them. Learners are told about the world and are expected to replicate its content and structure in their thinking” (Jonassen, 1991).
- 5. Learning: Situated cognition Social cultural learning CIP Materials: Authentic problems Teachers, experts, peers Technology: Networked computer; communication and collaboration Constructivist instruction
- 6. Which? Cognitive constructivism Social and cultural constructivism
- 7. Cognitive Constructivism Individual learners adapt and refine knowledge (Piaget; Brown et al.) Instructional implications: Aware of prior knowledge Challenge and develop initial ideas Provide opportunities to discuss/debate/reflect on new ideas in a range of contexts Engage in complex, meaningful problem-based activities Multiple assessments, both process and products
- 8. Social Constructivism Knowledge is shaped by cultural influences and evolves through participation in COP (Lave; Vygotsky) Instructional implications: Participate in collaborative activities relevant to discipline Support identity development Instructors as model of practitioners Tools (physical and psychological) as mediators of learning
- 9. Examples Problem-based learning – http://www.udel.edu/inst/problems/colorado/ Games simulations Others?
- 10. Issues of Design and Implementation Individual differences Group dynamics Instructor’s role Evaluation/assessment Others?
- 11. Constructivists argue that specific learning objectives are not possible--that meaning is always constructed by, and unique to, the individual; that all understanding is negotiated. In our opinion this is a very extreme position. Let me speak up for the vast amount of trivial cases, those situations where shared meaning is not only possible but necessary. Do we want students to have a self-chosen position with regard to the sound of letters in learning to read? Do we want students to have a self-chosen position about the meaning of the integers. Will a machine allow us to have a self-chosen position about how it works? ... Do we want students to have a self-chosen position ... about how to solve a linear equation? Do we want drivers to have a self-chosen position about the meaning of a red light? ... If I hire a surgeon to do heart surgery, PLEASE let me have one who has learned the trivial case and knows that my heart looks like every other human heart. Please don’t let him negotiate new meanings and hook up my veins in some self-chosen position to which [she/he] can commit [herself/himself]. I want her/him committed to the standard objective view. The trivial case is not so trivial. To dismiss so casually the objective case is perhaps the greatest danger of radical constructivism. (Merrill, 1992)
- 12. Norman: POET User-centered design: Users (not artifacts) at center Early focus on users to formulate requirements, briefs and prototypes Early, and continual user testing Iterative design Integrated design = Put learner, not instruction, at center of design process
Editor's Notes
- All of the above instructional techniques tend to be extemely linear. That is, the information given to the students builds upon prior information from the texts, lectures and so on. Thus, there is little room for student exploration. Students simply learn the desired information in a rank ordering. In addition, classrooms that partake in these more traditional forms of instruction tend to be teacher oriented. That is, the teacher is didacticly teaching, being the manager of the classroom and the major resourse of the given information.
- The ultimate point of education ist o prepare studetns for the ffective functioning in nonschool settings. Yet research, extensive asnd spanning decades, shows that individuals fo no predictably transfer knowledge to new situation where transfer should occur: school to everyday everyday to school one dicsipline to another transmit societies knowledge is school’s puropose. - encourages lecture teaching - control in hands of teacher undercuts students academic development and cognitive management skills, including goal setting, planning, evaluating, monitoring... - lectures produce the right answer approach to teaching arises out of behavior theory and results in a curriculum of disconnected items no understanding of context or where things fit together students carry ideas and constructs into all situations - if not fully examined, students tend to revert to old ideas when confronted with out of school situations. Context gives meaning to learning In a response to these potential problems indentified with traditional instructional designs, came the birth of the constuctivists. These theorists believe that the most significant outcomes in learning come from engaging the student in activity. If the student is engaged in activity, the learning switches from passive to generative. Giving the student the ability to activiely participate in the learning allows the student to "construct" their own learning perspective instead of the perspective handed to them by the teacher. One particular instuctional design that is in line with the constructivist theory is that of anchored instruction.
- Constructivism is often articulated in stark contrast to the behaviroist model of learning. B psych. Is interested in the study of changes in manifest behavior as opposed to changes in mental states. The mind is seen as an empty vessel, a tabula rasa to be filled or as a mirror reflecting relaity.. Behaviorism focuses in students efforts to accumulate knowledge of the natural world and on teachers’ efforts to transmit it. It therefore relies on transmission apporach with is largely passive. The view is sometimes called objectivism.
- All of the above instructional techniques tend to be extemely linear. That is, the information given to the students builds upon prior information from the texts, lectures and so on. Thus, there is little room for student exploration. Students simply learn the desired information in a rank ordering. In addition, classrooms that partake in these more traditional forms of instruction tend to be teacher oriented. That is, the teacher is didacticly teaching, being the manager of the classroom and the major resourse of the given information.
- Whewe behaviorism emphasizes the objservable, constructivism is a more cognitive approach. Within constructivism itslef, authors, researchers and theorists articulate differently the constructivist perspective by emphasizing different components., Nonetheless, there is some agreement on a large number of issues, for example, on the role of the teacher and the learner. The teachers play the role of a midwife in the birth of understanding and opposed to being mechanics of knowledge transfer. Their role is not to dispence knowledgfe, but provide students with opportunities and incentives to build it up. Teachers in this sense are guide and students are sense makes. 1.Understanding occurs through interactions with the environment. What is learned cannot be separated from how it is learned, suggesting that cognition is not just within the individual, but is a part of the entire context. 2.Cognitive conflict or puzzlement is the stimulus for learning, and determines the organization and nature of what is learned 3.Knowledge evolves through social negotiation and through the evaluation of viability of individual understandings. Individuals are a primary mechanism for testing our understanding. Collaborative groups test our understanding of particular issues. Other people are believed to be the greatest source of conflict that stimulates new learning Although we can tentatively come to know the knowledge of others by interpreting their language and actions through our own conceptual constructs, the others have relaties that are independent of ours. Indeed, it is the realities of others along with our own relaities that we strive to understand, bu t we can never take any of these realities as fixed.
- Whewe behaviorism emphasizes the objservable, constructivism is a more cognitive approach. Within constructivism itslef, authors, researchers and theorists articulate differently the constructivist perspective by emphasizing different components., Nonetheless, there is some agreement on a large number of issues, for example, on the role of the teacher and the learner. The teachers play the role of a midwife in the birth of understanding and opposed to being mechanics of knowledge transfer. Their role is not to dispence knowledgfe, but provide students with opportunities and incentives to build it up. Teachers in this sense are guide and students are sense makes. 1.Understanding occurs through interactions with the environment. What is learned cannot be separated from how it is learned, suggesting that cognition is not just within the individual, but is a part of the entire context. 2.Cognitive conflict or puzzlement is the stimulus for learning, and determines the organization and nature of what is learned 3.Knowledge evolves through social negotiation and through the evaluation of viability of individual understandings. Individuals are a primary mechanism for testing our understanding. Collaborative groups test our understanding of particular issues. Other people are believed to be the greatest source of conflict that stimulates new learning Although we can tentatively come to know the knowledge of others by interpreting their language and actions through our own conceptual constructs, the others have relaties that are independent of ours. Indeed, it is the realities of others along with our own relaities that we strive to understand, bu t we can never take any of these realities as fixed.
- Whewe behaviorism emphasizes the objservable, constructivism is a more cognitive approach. Within constructivism itslef, authors, researchers and theorists articulate differently the constructivist perspective by emphasizing different components., Nonetheless, there is some agreement on a large number of issues, for example, on the role of the teacher and the learner. The teachers play the role of a midwife in the birth of understanding and opposed to being mechanics of knowledge transfer. Their role is not to dispence knowledgfe, but provide students with opportunities and incentives to build it up. Teachers in this sense are guide and students are sense makes. 1.Understanding occurs through interactions with the environment. What is learned cannot be separated from how it is learned, suggesting that cognition is not just within the individual, but is a part of the entire context. 2.Cognitive conflict or puzzlement is the stimulus for learning, and determines the organization and nature of what is learned 3.Knowledge evolves through social negotiation and through the evaluation of viability of individual understandings. Individuals are a primary mechanism for testing our understanding. Collaborative groups test our understanding of particular issues. Other people are believed to be the greatest source of conflict that stimulates new learning Although we can tentatively come to know the knowledge of others by interpreting their language and actions through our own conceptual constructs, the others have relaties that are independent of ours. Indeed, it is the realities of others along with our own relaities that we strive to understand, bu t we can never take any of these realities as fixed.
- Whewe behaviorism emphasizes the objservable, constructivism is a more cognitive approach. Within constructivism itslef, authors, researchers and theorists articulate differently the constructivist perspective by emphasizing different components., Nonetheless, there is some agreement on a large number of issues, for example, on the role of the teacher and the learner. The teachers play the role of a midwife in the birth of understanding and opposed to being mechanics of knowledge transfer. Their role is not to dispence knowledgfe, but provide students with opportunities and incentives to build it up. Teachers in this sense are guide and students are sense makes. 1.Understanding occurs through interactions with the environment. What is learned cannot be separated from how it is learned, suggesting that cognition is not just within the individual, but is a part of the entire context. 2.Cognitive conflict or puzzlement is the stimulus for learning, and determines the organization and nature of what is learned 3.Knowledge evolves through social negotiation and through the evaluation of viability of individual understandings. Individuals are a primary mechanism for testing our understanding. Collaborative groups test our understanding of particular issues. Other people are believed to be the greatest source of conflict that stimulates new learning Although we can tentatively come to know the knowledge of others by interpreting their language and actions through our own conceptual constructs, the others have relaties that are independent of ours. Indeed, it is the realities of others along with our own relaities that we strive to understand, bu t we can never take any of these realities as fixed.