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Have you in your own education, your children’s education, or in a school you’ve taught at experienced a constructivist approach to education? If so, describe some of the impact (positive or negative) you experienced/witnessed.
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I have not ever experienced this kind of approach. I think it could be good to a degree, but the students must be held to some set standard of learning which this approach would not provide.
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Hands-on learning is great and instead of direct instruction, giving students the ability to discover the truth on their own without spoon-feeding them is great. With the correct guidance it can be incredibly effect. However, there is also a matter of time and with all the content needing to be covered we cannot do this for everything. However, letting the students decide what is important and giving students too much power when they are young, immature and not knowledgeable enough to make such decisions is not wise on a part of the school or educational system in general.
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I have not had any experience with this type of education. I can see how it could be fun, but students can miss out on a lot of important information.
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I have not experienced this in my educational experience, most of which has been in a private Christian school setting. I agree with the lesson that overall, a constructivist approach is not the best, and that adults should be leading the classroom. While we should encourage students to explore and discover areas of interest, the community as a whole is far too concerned with the individual as opposed to the community. As Christian educators, we should teach students that while God cares for us as individuals, He also created us to be in a body and should be concerned with working together.
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As a former home school educator, I would say that I used elements of a constructivist approach, but with a framework around it. I would give my sons a research paper to do, but would give them a wide array of topics to choose from so that they would choose something that interested them. In this way, they were more motivated to engage deeper into the assignment because they chose the topic. They still had to read, research, write outlines, give a speech on their paper and finish it with an artistic representation of their topic. I think it depends on the subject as well because some subjects offer more flexibility and autonomy than other subjects.