Constructivism, an area of learning theory, is an approach to teaching, which values developmentally appropriate practices where the learning is child-initiated, child-directed and where the teacher plays a supporting role in the learning.

History

This approach has not been widely valued in the past. This is due to the views that a play approach was seen as aimless, and of little importance. However, Piaget did not agree with these traditional views. He saw play as an important and neccessary part of the child's cognitive development and has even provided scientific evidence for his views.

Failure to distinguish between a constructivist approach and maturationist views

Constructivist views are commonly mistaken with the views of maturationist . "The romantic maturationist stream is based on the idea that the child's naturally occurring development should be allowed to flower without adult interventions in a permissive envrionment" (DeVries et al., 2002). Whereas, the constructivist stream (or the cognitive-developmental stream) "is based on the idea that the dialectic or interactionist process of development and learning through the child's active construction should be facilitated and promoted by adults" (DeVries et al., 2002).

The failure to distinguish between these views is done so mostly by the behaviourist stream; they believe that these two streams are one in the same. However, this is not the case. The constructivist teachers are there to aid the children, and provided support to their knowledge acquisition .

Theory of a constructivist approach and practices

The theory behind a constructivist approach is that the child's learning is done in a hands-on approach. The children learn by doing, and not by being told what will happen. They are left to make their own inferences , discoveries and conclusions. It also emphasizes that learning is not an "all or nothing" process but that students learn the new information that is presented to them by building upon knowledge that they already possess. It is therefore important that teachers constantly assess the knowledge their students have gained to make sure that the students perceptions of the new knowledge are what the teacher had intended. Teachers will find that since the students build upon already existing knowledge, when they are called upon to retrieve the new information, they may make errors. It is known as reconstruction error when we fill in the gaps of our understanding with logical, though incorrect, thoughts. Teachers need to catch and try to correct these errors, though it is inevitable that some reconstruction error will continue to occur because of our innate retrieval limitations.

The teacher's role is not only to observe and assess but to also engage with the children while they are completing activies, wondering aloud and posing question to the children for promotion of reasoning (DeVries et al., 2002). (ex: I wonder why the water does not spill over the edge of the full cup?) Teachers also intervene when there are conflicts that arise; however, they simply facilitate the children's resolutions and self-regulation, with an emphasis on the conflict being the children's and that they must figure things out for themselves.

When the promotion of literacy is done through integrating the need to read and write throughout individual activities within print-rich classroom. The teacher, after reading a story, encourages the children to write or draw stories of their own, or by having the children reenact a story that they may know well, both activities encourage the children to conceive themselves as reader and writers.

References

• DeVries et al. (2002) Developing constructivist early childhood curriculum: practical principles and activities. Teachers College Press: New York

See also

• Learning theory
• Autodidactism