Constructivism and its applications in instructional technology

Constructivist Instructional Technology

During the twentieth century, public education evolved from the proverbial one-room schoolhouse to a modern educational system based on twelve years of progressive structured levels of instructional lessons. Likewise, early public educational materials often consisted of little more than a single textbook used throughout grade school, perhaps another textbook used throughout middle school, and little more throughout high school.

By the beginning of this century, public education has evolved significantly, incorporating integrated series of age-appropriate, subject-specific textbooks. Many textbook series also include workbooks and other integrated study and lesson-based diagnostic materials. Notwithstanding the undeniable progress of public (and private) education systems, the principles behind educational methods have not change very substantially in the last two centuries of American education (Adams & Hamm, 1994).

Traditional academic education focuses on the learning by rote memorization in the case of fact-based academic subjects, repetitive practice of mechanical techniques in the case of mathematics, and a combination of rote memorization and repetitive practice of techniques in the case of physical and biological sciences. In the last half of the twentieth century, several contemporary education theorists have proposed alternative instructional methods to take advantage the actual mechanisms behind all human learning, instead of the traditional educational approach that relies almost exclusively on memorization and repetition.

Constructionist Educational Theory: In education, constructivism refers, generally, to learning from observational experience, active participation, and especially, active reasoning, instead of through various forms of memorization and repetitive practice. Many education theorists believe that learning by experience and by lesson reinforcement through practical application is markedly preferable to even the most creative forms of traditional, passive educational approaches (Schroeder & Spannagel, 2006).

That is not to say that variety in traditional teaching materials and lesson plans is unimportant, because it is understood that almost any type of novelty contributes to greater subject matter-interest, and higher retention levels than achievable with a single type of lesson for all modules and for all subjects. Everything else being equal, lessons that feature a combination of lecture, written texts, and workbooks achieve better results than the identical lesson presented through any one medium by itself.

This principle explains the success of flashcards, one of the earliest and simplest methods of adding lesson variety to maximize attention span, interest, and lesson retention.

While multi-dimensional modules are generally more successful than one- dimensional modules; even the most creative multi-dimensional instructional programs still rely on passive learning. Constructivism is designed around an entirely different concept of using active learning and the specific application of more general lesson principles to parallel instructional problems instead of memory-based learning (Shmaefsky, 2005).

Instructional Constructivist Technology in the Gardner Educational Method:

One of the first pioneers of constructivist educational programs is Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard University School of Education,

According to Gardner's multiple intelligences-based theory of education, learning takes place through seven different specific types of intelligence: namely, linguistic, quantitative logic (i.e. mathematics), bodily-kinesthetics, interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical, and spatial orientation.

Traditional educational approaches, even where they incorporate a wide variety of different types of instructional materials, make use of only two of the seven types of intelligences defined by Gardner: linguistic and quantitative logic. In principle, Gardner's criticism of traditional educational theory, methods, and materials is that they promote effective learning primarily in students who happen to have superior aptitude in those two types of intelligences to the virtual exclusion of the other five types. Incorporating lesson-type variety by adding workbooks, practical demonstrations, and video tapes increases attention span and interest, but their benefits are disproportional, favoring students with better natural linguistic ability and quantitative logical aptitude (Gardner, 1999).

The Gardner School in Vancouver, Washington, utilizes a wide variety of constructivist teaching materials designed to promote active learning equally through all seven of the intelligences identified by Gardner. This approach makes use of everything from music to games of spatial orientation and kinesthetic awareness (like the 1960's Twister™) to teach traditional academic material. Creativity is a necessary attribute for instructors using the Gardner method of instruction, precisely because it does not prescribe the use of any specific materials in particular at all.

A typical approach within the Gardner system might use an ice skating session to present lessons of Newtonian physics in a manner conducive to understanding by students with better kinesthetic awareness, for one example. Likewise, music might be used to present mathematical concepts such as ratio and scale, or scientific concepts such as the physics of mechanical waves. The Gardner method employs these materials in a manner designed to promote active learning by presenting the subject matter lesson directly through materials that lend themselves to absorption via all seven intelligences (Gardner, 1999).

Instructional Constructivist Technology in Active Learning Educational Methods:

One of the most comprehensive educational system emphasizing the constructivist method is the Full Option Science System (FOSS) program. The FOSS materials include lecture and text-based lesson components, but balanced with practical materials. However the crucial educational value of the FOSS materials is that they are not simply practical representations, or even applications of the subject matter lesson (Huber, 2001).

Whereas traditional use of practical science materials merely reinforces the learning module by demonstration, the FOSS lesson materials are specifically designed to teach a scientific principle instead of just scientific facts. A typical FOSS lesson might present geological concepts such as environmental erosion by materials that enable students to construct a working representational models that requires their use of sediments of different density, water, and variably sloped grades to implement the lecture materials and text. The FOSS program requires students to creatively apply lesson concepts to the materials, to deduce answers from observations, and to formulate their own explanations for unanticipated outcomes. It also provides the opportunity to apply those conceptual principles to unique experiments of their own design using independent configurations of the FOSS lesson materials (Huber, 2001).

Conclusion:

Education theorists are largely in agreement that active participation promotes better lesson retention at all levels of primary and secondary education. Variety in lesson materials is also widely acknowledged to improve student attention and interest in academic subject matter. Modern academic programs feature integrated materials intended to complement each other, reinforce the lessons, and provide variety in presentation. Nevertheless, even these materials fail to change the one constant: they rarely manage to stimulate active learning in the manner achieved by constructive educational approaches and materials.