My response in regard to my current and previous practices, as an educator, which “reflect a Constructivist approach,” are in part based on the views of constructivism from the readings of Driscoll, Orey, Seels and Glasgow. I do not have a background in Instructional Design, but have looked to learn from the theories presented, Seels and Glasgow, specifically, on how instructional designers should establish conditions to increase the likelihood that learning will occur, and apply these conditions to instructional design decisions. (Seels, B. & Glasgow, Z. (p. 179)
I like the curriculum I use for my reading strategy class; it is called “Joining a Community of Readers, by Robert Alexander. The book offers “A holistic approach to developing reading skills and building schema.” Until I read the chapter on, Meaningful Learning and Schema Theory by Driscoll, I did not know what particular theory of learning I have been using, since 2006. It is good to be able to put a name to what are “my current practices, as an educator,” which do reflect a “Constructivist approach.”
As we all have read, schema is “a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory, and schemata are packets of knowledge.” Schemata theory is a theory of how these packets are represented and how that representation facilitates the use of the knowledge, in particular ways. ” (Rumelhart, 1980), p. 34)(p. 129)
The students whom I teach, at the community college level, come from diverse backgrounds. Many fit the categories of drop outs, GED, older adults, laid-off workers, English Language Learners, and all are taking my class because they failed to pass the COMPASS test, which is required for placement in general education courses. I see where many of my students bring to the classroom, what schemata calls, “imprecise, partial, and idiosyncratic understandings.” (p.130) These understandings, as it relates to reading, are evolved at various stages, dependent on each individuals' experiences prior to attending the reading strategies' class. My students individual levels of understanding, are pretty down to earth, and not always correct, because each student brings their understandings, based on the context of their world.
Joining A Community of Readers, taps into this “prior knowledge,” and I facilitate the learning process, by teaching and reinforcing, throughout the class, the PRO reading process, which shows students how to “prepare to read,” “read actively,” and “organize to learn.” The process is a key in helping students to incorporate new knowledge. For Example, most of the readings in the book, deal with current events and topics that students would be familiar with, i.e., life issues, current events, etc. Many of the students already know about these topics that I ask them to study and are able to make “meaningful connections between what they know and what they are being asked to learn.“ What students are being asked to learn for example, would be context clues, compare and contrast and inferences.
I found it interesting and noted that in activating prior knowledge, it is possible that my students were viewing the information that I was presenting, and they were being asked to learn, “as separate and distinct from their prior knowledge, approaching the learning materials in a “rote fashion.” I did not know that this is a possible answer as to why they would “fail to assimilate the information into related prior knowledge.” For instance, the students would complete a reading on a familiar topic. The topic for that particular chapter might be making inferences. We would go over the reading, and students would answer questions in regard to the topic of inferences, as it related to the reading. Students would then give their own examples, personal experiences, on the topic. However, when it became time to test on the subject, some students failed to be able to assimilate the information “into related prior knowledge,” subsequently doing poorly on the end of chapter quizzes. The reading suggests that the “activation of prior knowledge should not be left to chance.” Ausbel says, to make sure that meaningful learning takes place, as an instructor I should “continue to employ a variety of strategies” to help my students “relate their prior knowledge to new information they are to acquire.” Ausbel refers to this as “the first function of instruction.”
Prior to going into our readings, the first few chapters in our text go over organizing to learn, the PRO learning system. It puts a heavy emphasis on organizing, as key to being a successful student. These pre-reading strategies, act as, what Ausbel proposes, the advanced organizer, and work to influence the students encoding process, as Mayer describes, to either “provide a new general organization as an assimilative context that would not have normally been present or to activate a general organization from the learner’s existing knowledge that would not have normally been used to assimilate the new material.” (p. 139) It is good to see that according to schema theorist, I am on the right track, and have been using the PRO reading process, in activating prior knowledge in my students, as they are engaged improving their reading skills.
Lastly, a current practices, as an educator, which is alluded to in the reading by Mayer (p.139) and corroborated by Driscoll in Psychology of Learning for Instruction, is the idea that as an instructor I should seek to have specific knowledge about what my students already know, so that students can relate the new information to their existing knowledge. Driscoll calls this “elaboration,” in which the students should be “actively engaged in the material that is to be learned,” in a process similar to a schema.
Hopefully, one day as I grow in my knowledge of ISD, I will be able to apply more knowledgeably " use Constructivist design, in working within Blackboard, technology which I have available to use with my classes, for giving my students, better opportunities, as in constructivism, to explore, interpret, and debate positions, presented within our textbook, Joining A Community of Readers.
A learning outcome or goal that I think would be well addressed by using a Constructivist approach would involve reading comprehension. When students read, comprehension and memory of what is read are facilitated when students know and can access a relevant schema. All the readings in Joining a Community of Readers, our textbook, have a common structure, which includes a topic, main idea, detail and conclusion. The reading's schema, guides the comprehension and recall of the readings' events, which the students often put in an outline format. The student use outlining as a way to organize the reading, which helps them to pay more attention to the important information. I also noticed in establishing the habits of outlining, my weaker readers are able to comprehend more of what they read, by focusing on the structure of the text.
A learning outcome or goal that I think would not be well addressed by using a Constructivist approach, and mentioned in one of the readings, would be in the area of behavior modification, using positive and negative reinforcement. Constructivist may not see a positive learning outcome between how an increase in positive behaviors is positively reinforced and a decrease in positive behaviors is negatively reinforced. If your students interpret positive and negative reinforcement, based on the context of their prior experiences, students could experience confusion. The concept of negative reinforcement, for some students is associated in everyday life with events that imply punishment. Positive behavior, for some students is contingent, negatively upon the reward for behavior. Constructivist would look for a better way to compare and contrast these concepts, to personalize it and orient it towards problem solving for the students.
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