This entry is part of journal-writing requirement in the Theories of Learning course of the Professional Teaching Certificate program offered by the University of the Philippines Open University.
Hello, everyone yo! I just want to add my previous post on constructivism and my learning experience. This post is a lot shorter than the previous one as I only wish to share my thoughts on how constructivism I am as a teacher.
Two questions to clarify my first question “How constructivist am I?” — 1. How can I become a better constructivist? and 2. How may I influence education practice to shift towards constructivist ideology and practice?
I believe that my approaches and strategies in teaching and learning have gradually developed from traditional pedagogy to constructivism when I became a high school teacher. In my previous post, I shared about my experiences about learning on the job as a teacher and that experience itself is “constructivist”, to a great extent.
1. How can I become a better constructivist — I keep it simple. I used to add say a lot in my lectures. I used to add a lot of details in exam questions. I had very long topic outlines or syllabus, which can be quite helpful too by the way.
But I have realized that providing or facilitating a concise, clear, coherent, and creatively done course for students is a lot better than traditional pedagogy. Students learn best when they are given some guided liberty, anchored in some structural guidelines, to learn throughout the course. I’d like to keep doing this, until such time that a much better approach is introduced. For now, I use scaffolding, experiential learning, and social interaction are some approaches that I find effective when I teach. I do not overwhelm them with too many materials to read too. I give them a list of essential readings and let them search other relevant materials. I also focus on one or two essential questions for discussion and come up with very few requirements through which peers can assess them too.
2. How may I influence education practice to shift towards constructivist ideology and practice? — I just do my job well. I never force my style to anyone, or any of my colleagues. I only share my ideas and let them decide if they’d like to apply them in their lessons. For example, right now, I do team-teaching with a Japanese Teacher of English. She’s a new teacher and has had only textbook-based knowledge on teaching. Basically, she’s theory-based while I am practiced-based. Of course, I also apply what I learn in my education courses but application of experience-based learnings are often more effective. When we plan lessons, I would usually provide suggestions. I would never force them. She would often agree with the idea. When we implement it, we spot some areas for improvement and we talk about them after each lesson. By doing this, we basically apply constructivism — learning by experience and collaboration.
It’s good to be ambitious — but great things start from small beginnings. It always starts from within.
Commentaires