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Cultural Environment. Prior to 1900, educational practice possessed little in terms
of a theoretical framework. It was certainly not considered
scientific nor subject to scientific study, but was a holistic enterprise
in which teachers were expected to teach facts while also shaping
character (Wiburg, 1995).
Until about 1890 the "theoretical" elements in teacher preparation were of two kinds: the study of certain principles of teaching and school management, exemplified in the textbooks written by experienced schoolmen that were published in many countries during the second half of the 19th century. But after 1890 psychology and sociology began to crystallize as more or less distinctive areas of study. Students of education began to have a wider and more clearly structured range of disciplines to draw upon for their data and perspectives, and to provide a "scientific" basis for their pedagogic principles (Teacher Education: Late 19th and Early 20th Century Developments).
Countries were starting to be classified as being democratic, nationalistic, patriotic, socialistic, or religious in nature. In the U.S., fears developed in the late 1950s because of a loss of technological supremacy with Communist Russia. This encouraged a revival of interest in progressive ideas. As a result, philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists began to redefine the teacher-pupil relationship. More significance was placed on the child’s needs and interests, individual development, and assessment of abilities (Teacher Education).
Purpose and Nature of Education. Piaget began his work in the field of biology, but eventually became the foremost developmental psychologist of the 20th century. He studied many aspects of children’s intellectual development. What intrigued Piaget was epistemology, the branch of philosophy that focuses on the nature of knowledge. But most important, from the point of view of educational technology, was his formulation of models of cognition, which provided guidelines for a fresh, fruitful approach to the problems of instructional design (Saettler, p. 72).
Piaget detected that all children go through four stages of cognitive development. While the ages at which they experience these stages vary somewhat, he felt that each developed higher reasoning abilities (Roblyer, 1997, p. 67).
Piaget believed that a child’s development from one
stage to another took place through a gradual process of interacting with
the environment. Children develop as they confront new and
unfamiliar features of their environment that do no fit with their current
views of the world. When this happens, he said, a "disequilibrium"
occurs that the child seeks to resolve through one of the two processes of
adaptation. The child either fits the new experiences into his or
her existing view of the world, called assimilation, or changes
that schema or view of the world to incorporate the new experiences,
called accommodation, (p. 67).
These stages, he felt, occur naturally. Thus, he believed that much of what a child needs to learn cannot and should not be consciously taught. Rather, it should emerge as the natural by-product of experiences. There, Piaget advocated nonintervention, saying that "Everything one teaches a child prevents him from inventing or discovering" (p. 65).
Piaget’s research led him to conclude that the growth of knowledge is the result of individual constructions made by the learner. Piaget wrote late in his career:
The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as knowledge in the past has changed, and, in many instances, more rapidly. Scientific thought, then, is not momentary; it is not a static instance; it is a process. More specifically, it is a process of continual construction and reorganization (Brooks and Brooks, 1993, p. 25).
Influence on Free Learning in Education. Summarizing Piaget’s educational philosophy, a child’s development took place through a gradual process of stages of interacting with the environment. He felt these stages occurred naturally and couldn’t be consciously taught. If intervened with, the child was prevented from inventing and discovering.
In a traditional educational setting the students’ academic growth has already been planned out for them. It is a controlled environment, and certain demands are made from each student at every grade level. But Piaget believed that education was about forming the mind, not just furnishing it (DeVries, 1987, p. 17).
It is evident that Piaget believed a better learning environment should exist for students—a free learning environment. His notion was a learner can profitably search for their own answers. As such, the learner should construct their own learning process. Perhaps this is why Piaget is generally regarded as a major contributor of theoretical principles for constructivist thinking.
Cultural Environment.
By the late 70s, one of the most significant technological
inventions in history appeared—the microcomputer, or in common language,
the personal computer. This advancement was revolutionary because of
its enormous potential, not only in the learning process, but also in
business operations. In a natural response, parents began to be
anxious to have their students conversant with computer technology so as
to enhance their chances of employment.
At this same time the number of students in schools were beginning to decline. To maintain student numbers, some schools felt bound to introduce (micro)computers as providing ‘an edge’ over neighboring schools and thereby maintaining enrollments (A Brief History of Computers in the Classroom, 1996, p. 2).
However, the biggest problem facing computer users was very limited software availability. Therefore, anyone using the personal computer had to write (in computer language) their own software programs. Obviously, these self-written programs were proprietary as well as confined in their use according to what they were designed for.
What was needed was someone or some company to develop
standardized software learning programs for the classroom. And that
is where Seymour Papert becomes a very significant person in the history
of educational technology, because he helped to do just that.
Purpose and Nature of Education. Papert, a mathematician and pupil of Piaget, characterized children as "builders of their own intellectual structures." And he asserted that these structures developed in a certain order. Papert believed, given the right resources and experiences (i.e. the personal computer), even very young children could accelerate their development and learn concepts involving formal operations (Roblyer, p. 68).
Papert felt strongly that school instruction was frequently counterproductive to children’s natural cognitive development. He frequently echoed Piaget’s beliefs that the most important learning was "learning without being taught," and that the schools put too much emphasis on structured teaching. Papert believed that the purpose of education should provide rich, motivational environments which foster cognitive growth, and he felt that computers could make such environments possible (p. 68).
After joining the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory team at MIT in the late 1970s, he began to experiment with a new computer programming language called LOGO. Along with the other members on his MIT team, they began to combine this language with their work with children. In order to make learning via the computer for children easier, they integrated an on-screen "turtle" into the LOGO language. This addition provided the vital link that Papert felt would allow children to move more easily from the concrete operations of earlier stages of Piaget’s hypothesis, to the more abstract (formal) ones (p. 69).
LOGO offered what he called "microworlds," or self-contained, orderly environments that children could use as "incubators for knowledge."
Although he never used the term discovery learning, Papert felt that children should be allowed to "teach themselves." With LOGO "new ideas are often acquired as a means of satisfying a personal need to do something one could not do before." He felt that children need great flexibility to develop their own "powerful ideas" or insights about new concepts (p. 69).
In his 1980 book Mindstorms, Papert wrote:
In many schools today, the phrase "computer-aided instruction" [CIA] means making the computer teach the child. One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building (Papert, 1980, p. 5).
Papert went on to say that "if we really look at the child as builder, we are on our way to an answer.
To Papert, all technology played an essential role in the realization of his vision of the future of education. His central focus was not on the machine, but on the mind, and particularly on the way in which intellectual movements and cultures define themselves and grow. Indeed, the role he gave to the computer was that of a carrier of cultural "seeds," whose intellectual products would not need technological support once they took root in an actively growing mind.
Influence on Free Learning in Education. Papert was one of the first vocal critics of using technology in the context of traditional instructional methods. In Mindstorms, he also became one of the first to raise the national consciousness about the potential role of technology in creating alternatives to what he perceived as inadequate and harmful educational methods.
According to Papert intellectual structures were built by the learner, rather than taught by a teacher. Yet, that did not mean that they were built from nothing. On the contrary: like other builders, children allocate materials to their own use as they find out about them— most saliently the models and metaphors suggested by the surrounding culture.
Compare this to traditional educational systems which teach students how to build that which has already been built for them. This makes the student a re-builder, not a constructive builder! This is not the "rich motivational environment" which Papert had in mind.
In a free learning environment, the student must be able to develop their own powerful ideas and new concepts. In this way motivation is built into the instructional method, whereby the student is able to teach themselves. Yes, this is revolutionary! But with the advancement of computerized hardware and software, it is now ideally possible to offer our students this dynamic independence and autonomy in their educational pursuits.
During the last half of the 20th
century, two very different views on teaching and learning
developed. One view, which one author calls directed instruction
(Roblyer, p. 55), is grounded primarily in behaviorist learning theory and
the information processing branch of the cognitive learning
theories. The other view, which is referred to as constructivism,
evolved from other branches of thinking in cognitive learning theory.
Currently, trends in school instruction seem to be leaning toward more motivating, interactive, and cooperative learning activities in which the teacher is more a facilitator and manager of resources than a means of delivering information to passive receivers (p. 73).
In the 1990’s, technology has advanced faster than in any generation of this world's history. Now that the Internet is a reality, the potential and possibilities seem limitless. Combined with very advanced and extensive software rapidly becoming available, a student has the capability of getting a higher education without even physically attending a classroom. The Educational Technology Leadership program at George Washington University is self-evident to this.
Utilizing these newer educational opportunities, it is easy to see that an external directed instructional method would be difficult to employ in this type of environment. Competition and the independent spirit of democracy, not to mention of nature itself, conveys we must look at new ways to educate students—who can be of any age, gender, or nationality.
Going into the 21st century, the constructivist method of education seems to be the primary formula which can best fit this educational demand. And to our benefit, it favors the freedom of the learner in their educational quests.
Purpose and Nature of Education.
Constructivist strategies in education are based on
principles of learning that were derived from branches of cognitive
science. This area focuses specifically on students’ motivation to
learn and their ability to use what they learn outside of their
"school culture" (p. 65).
The constructivist method emphasizes students’ ability to solve real-life, practical problems. In this model, learners construct knowledge themselves, rather than simply receiving it from knowledgeable teachers. They tend to focus on projects that require solutions to problems rather on instructional sequences that require learning of certain content skills.
In contrast to directed instruction, where the teacher sets the goals and delivers most of the instruction, the job of the teacher in the constructivist models is to arrange required resources and act as a guide to students, while they set their own goals and teach themselves (p. 70). For example, rather than teaching an isolated objective such as identifying animals by phylum and genus, teachers may try to get their students to carry out cooperative projects that investigate the behavior of animals in the local environment.
Constructivism is not a theory about teaching. It is a theory about knowledge and learning (Brooks and Brooks, p. vii). To understand constructivism, educators must focus attention on the learner (p. 22). Sometimes instructional activities based on constructivist models are more time-consuming, since they may call for teachers to organize and facilitate group work and to evaluate in authentic ways. This is especially true with activities involving newer technologies such as interactive video and multimedia (Roblyer, p. 71).
It is also important to recognize potential contradictions in theorists’ view on how teachers should carry out constructivist approaches. For example, in contrast to the views of some constructivists, Papert feels that learning activities should be fairly unstructured and open-ended, frequently with no goal in mind other than discovery of "powerful ideas" (p. 72)
All constructivist approaches call for some flexibility in achieving desired goals. Most stress exploration rather than merely "getting the right answer," and a high degree of what the advocates of directed instruction would call discovery learning. Constructivists differ among themselves, however, about how much assistance and guidance a teacher should offer. Also needed in this new educational territory, obviously, are different evaluation methods (p. 72).
Despite these criticisms, interest in constructivist methods are on the rise. More attention than ever before is being focused on carrying out research to measure the impact of learning based upon student problem solving and product development.
Brooks and Brooks provide a detailed description of both classroom practice and its underlying theoretical connections. They provide five overarching principles of a constructivist pedagogy (Brooks and Brooks, p. viii). Notice the concepts of Abelard, Comenius, Piaget, and Papert embodied in their recommendations:
1. Posing problems of emerging relevance to learners
2. Structuring learning around "big ideas" or primary concepts
3. Seeking and valuing students’ point of view
4. Adapting curriculum to address students’ suppositions
5. Assessing student learning in the context of teaching
It sounds like a simple proposition: we construct our own understandings of the world in which we live. We search for tools to help us understand our experiences. To do so is human nature. It is simply honoring and respecting the person in the learning process (p. 4). Accepting the proposition that we learn by constructing new understandings of relationships and phenomenon in our world makes accepting the present structure of schooling difficult. Educators must invite students to experience the world’s richness, empower them to ask their own questions and seek their own answers, and challenge them to understand the world’s complexities.
Duckworth describes her vision of teaching in the following way, "I propose situations for people to think about, and [then] I watch what they do. They tell me what they make of it rather than my telling them what to make of it." This approach values the students’ points of view and attempts to encourage students in the directions they have charted for themselves (p. 5).
Constructivism stands in contrast to the more
deeply rooted ways of teaching that have long typified American
classrooms. Traditionally, learning as been thought to be a
"mimetic" activity, a process that involves students repeating,
or miming, newly presented information in reports or on quizzes and
tests. Constructivist teaching practices, on the other hand,
help learners to internalize and reshape, or transform, new
information. Transformation occurs through the creation of new
understandings that result from the emergence of new cognitive structures
(p. 15).
When teachers recognize and honor the human impulse to construct new understandings, unlimited possibilities are created for students. Educational settings that encourage the active construction of meaning have several characteristics (p. 102):
 | They free students from the dreariness of fact-driven curriculums and allow them to focus on large ideas |
| They place in students’ hands the exhilarating power to follow trails of interest, to make connections, to reformulate ideas, and to reach unique conclusions |
| They share with students the important message that the world is a complex place in which multiple perspectives exist, and truth is often a matter of interpretation |
| They acknowledge that learning, and the process of assessing learning, are, at best, elusive and messy endeavors that are not easily managed |
Becoming a teacher who helps students to search rather than follow is challenging, and, in many ways, frightening.
Every day, millions of students enter school wanting to learn, hoping to be stimulated, engaged, and treated well, and hoping to find meaning in what they do. And every day that educators stimulate and challenge the students to focus their minds on meaningful tasks, to think about important issues, and to construct new understandings of their worlds, both teachers and students achieve a meaningful victory (p. 120).
Influence on Free Learning in Education. Constructivism best culminates the free learning environment which has been expounded by Abelard, Comenius, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Piaget, and Papert. It has been close to 700 years since the noted teacher Peter Abelard first proposed a learning climate where unrestricted and non-forbidden questions were allowed. In fact, he believed this environment should be characteristic for all learning. Examine and inquire as opposed to being decreed.
In its purest form, constructivism means allowing the learner to "construct" knowledge, concepts and understanding in their own minds. The focus is on asking questions which help students provide solutions to problems versus learning content skills. Accordingly, learning should be discovered by way of an exploration process, instead of just learning the commonly accepted "right answers." I especially like the idea that constructivism teaches exploring, questioning, reshaping, transforming, and internalizing information. Thus emerges an autonomous, independent and self-directed human being. And correspondingly, this search for understanding and knowledge continues throughout a person’s life.
A new set of images, reflective of new practices, is needed—images that portray the student as a thinker; a creator; and a constructor. Schools can become settings in which students are encouraged to develop hypotheses, to test out their own and others’ ideas, to make connections among "content" areas, to explore issues and problems of personal relevance (either existing or emerging), to work cooperatively with peers and adults in the pursuit of understanding, and to form the disposition to be life-long learners (p. 127).
The old images of school do not speak directly to the central issue of school reform—ways to evoke student learning through their search for understanding. The images of constructivism do (p. 127).