Constructivism

This unit has been dedicated to Constructivist thinking in educational philosophy and cognition. Constructivism is a broad movement encompassing many factions but the main thread is that students learn innately, by doing and creating connections for themselves.  Starting with Jean Piaget, or some might say with John Dewey, the constructivists saw learning as an activity that is built into brain development, not the other way around, with progressive exposure to facts and rules leading to understanding and mastery.

Like the Behaviorists, they see the "traditional" method of teaching as ineffective.  Lecturing, passive experience and the use of authority and "grading" as the heart of experience treat the student as a receptacle to be filled with knowledge.   Their prescription is not more tightly controlled input, with the student considered tabula rasa, but instead an open, project-based environment where the student learns by doing, and proceeds from the big picture onward.

This model has caused me to reflect a great deal on my own practice, as my career.  I am no Behaviorist, much the opposite, but I learned in the "Old School" and my career has been a constant struggle to adjust to the 'new' constructivist approach.  I am comfortable and actually quite entertaining in front of a class, which has added to my resistance to new paradigms.  However, over the years, I have noticed that my methods, while very effective with a certain type of student, do not work at all with many of my lowest-functioning students.  This would be anybody from the lower C area on down.  If they cannot attend to what I am saying, they will not learn.  If my words are too difficult for them, the book will be more of the same.

I have taken coursework on applying the Next Generation Science Standards, and they suggest a very constructivist approach.  The teacher's rols is not to lecture, but to lead students through discussions of evidence, and to help them come up with explanations for phenomena.  I am not to jump to reward the kid with the "right" answer so that the discussion stays to my script.  Instead, I am to  encourage everybody to verbalize or otherwise represent their understanding.

This is not the story of my dramatic turnaround.  I am still struggling.  Students may be able to construct their own learning, but many will not do that actively for themselves.  The resistance to making mental effort is strong in many students, and they will spend tremendous energy on avoiding the expenditure of energy.  Constructivism is difficult in an environment where students are not able to be present in their own lives for whatever reason.  In those cases, with precious little time to spend with them individually, I find myself at a loss.  Hopefully, the transition will happen soon, because right now, I feel like a man without a paradigm.

Drawing a Square and Hexagon in LOGO

Here is a link to my video of my programmed drawing of a square and hexagon. 

https://youtu.be/_42gAZpIeBM

I enjoyed using LOGO after reading about it in research that I have done on Papert's Constructionism. It was like meeting an old Aunt that I have heard a great deal about.  True to that analogy, I found it to be charming, but a little bit limiting. At the same time it was challenging because it is a new environment.

This is not my first experience learning to code onscreen objects in an educational setting.  I have worked extensively with Scratch animation for my Create with Code course (were you in that with me, William?).  What I like the most about programming is that it is in your hands, and it is only limited by the tools that you have at that time.  You can think of workarounds for almost anything if you use your imagination.

It is amazing how many mental shortcuts are laid bare when you try them in a programming environment.  Your thought process gets a real editing when you have to be systematic about every step.  The compiler will not fill in the blanks of your thought process for you!

Week 3 Reflections--Behaviorism

OK, I am supposed to write about Behaviorism as it relates to education.  I have had my fill of behaviorism which is the same way that I felt going into it.  I don't like it as a pursuit relative to other fields in psychology, and to predict and control are not the goal I would ask from studying the human condition.  There are so many things that people can learn through experiences and conversations and relationships that cannot be taught by incrementally-reinforced tidbits.  I like Behaviorism even less in respect to all of the things that it is good at--predicting and shaping behavior, and doing so seamlessly so that it is almost a passive process.

This article describes a young delinquent's experience as of being trapped in a Skinnerian Education facility called Learning House at Stanford University in the 1970's (The Minotaur of the Behaviorist Maze: Surviving Stanford’s Learning House in the 1970’s).  This child's experience, months of life lived in the most bizarrely inhuman (though not abusive in any way) environment I have heard about.  Young graduate students, without child-rearing experience of their own, were raising these children according purely according to theory, doling out heavily systematized reinforcements and punishments according to an almost completely incomprehensible checklist of social interactions.  The result was that the child learned to show no distinguishing outward characteristics or volition.  Fewer loose ends for the behaviorist "monks" to grab hold of.  She became completely distanced from her emotional core as a defense mechanism.

This is the kind of thing you get when you start with the assumption that you can control all aspects of a person's psyche and the world's psychological operations just by parsing the question incrementally, and by knowing what kind of stimulus makes the pigeon twirl to the left.

I am a Constructivist all the way, though I do not deny Behaviorism its place.