e. In the overall context of daily teaching) than merely scoring their ability to demonstrate superficial recall of assigned information of questionable relevance (Brooks & Brooks, 1999).
In the constructivist classroom, students work within smaller groups that promote interactive communication, expression and sharing of thoughts processes, and critical evaluation of ideas related to assigned substantive subject matter (Brooks & Brooks, 1999). Within the traditional format, students almost always work in isolation. Teachers using constructivist methods teach interactively and they deliberately involve students in two-way exchanges and expression of ideas and analyses. There is a specific effort of selecting subject matter that relates in meaningful ways to important contemporary concepts, issues, controversies, and concerns (Brooks & Brooks, 1999).
The other most important defining characteristic of constructivist classrooms is that teachers evaluate learning much more broadly than they do within the traditional classroom (Brooks & Brooks, 1999). Instead of assessing learning primarily (or exclusively) through end-of-term (or periodic) testing, teachers conduct assessments continually throughout the term and in connection with every aspect of student involvement...
It was relatively cheap to implement and capable of being taught easily to educators. Today, what we know about the limits of the traditional approach suggests that other educational methods are more productive. The constructivist model in particular, achieves a fundamental change in the way that teachers communicate educational information, in the way that students learn and learn to think, and in the way that teachers evaluate student learning. It replaces the passive absorption of questionably relevant material by rote memorization with the active learning of relevant information within dynamic interactions with teachers in a manner conducive to genuine and long-term learning and the development of critical reasoning skills.
References
Brooks, J.G. & Brooks, M.G. (1999). In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Burton, J., Moore, D., and Magliaro, S. (2004). Behaviorism and Instructional
Technology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ.
