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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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There is a teacher in our math department who is using a more constructivist approach to teaching. The students do not choose what to learn, but her teaching is centered on the idea that students retain information they “discover” on their own rather than being told the connections in a lecture. While it does seem to work relatively well (I adopted a modified version of this approach – after introduction of the content, groups work together on examples before independent work begins), students who choose not to participate or who rely on other students in their group to “figure it out” seem to struggle. The challenge with this approach is monitoring each group to ensure that all students are active in making the discovery and not just relying on one or two “smart” students to do the work.
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I have not been a part of the constructivist approach, and have not seen this approach employed solely in any school I’ve been in. Many teachers allow great freedom in choosing assignment types, though, and those teachers are always popular with students. Other teachers are stick-to-the-basics, and for good reasons. Much depends on the subject matter. I taught music, but even so, there was little time for each to explore according to their own whims. The schedule was not favorable to such, with so many students and so little time.
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At our school, we teach a class on Research. The students chooses his/her topic, designs an experiment, and writes a research paper. This class allowed some students to flourish. however, most students were doing nothing, due to the lack of structure and the abundance of freedom.
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I have a friend whose youngest child attended a school with a constructivist approach to education. Based on observed behaviors and attitudes, I would not want my own child to attend that school nor would I want to teach there. I have also had children in my class that came from such a school. The children would not/could not stay in their seats, told me “no,” and did what they wanted to do which created an environment where the other children could not learn.
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I have not experienced this but I would feel that it could be mostly negative because if the student doesn’t see the importance or value in a well-rounded education then they won’t pay attention to what you’re saying. The positive could be that the education could be specific to what the child is wanting to go into.
