Piaget observed students relate to objects at this age by touching what is concrete, describing objects and an object's location in space.
Question
How well did Jenny follow constructivist guidelines? What could she have done differently to make the lesson more constructivist?
Jenny made use of group activities, and socially engaged forms of learning, although a strict constructivist would have wanted her to begin with such group activities.
Discuss constructivism in terms of the constructs defined and discussed by both Piaget and Vygotsky in the text. What is the basic difference between the approaches of these two theorists?
Piaget believed that biological development drives the movement from one cognitive stage to the next, while Vygotsky stressed the need for such learning to be more carefully constructed in an orderly fashion by the teacher, who must create a scaffold for one level of learning to the next.
Discuss how Jenny adapted constructivist techniques in her class in order to elicit thought and participation on the part of her students, including at least two concrete examples that demonstrate constructivism in this classroom.
Using team teaching of concepts about objects between students would have created more of a hands-on environment, and prevented the instruction from exceeding the student's current cognitive capacities of their developmental stage. This could have reinforced misconceptions. However, Jenny did make use of scaffolding, that is, introducing more familiar concepts that she used to build upon, to introduce less familiar concepts. Also, her own example-based learning in front of the class acted as a kind of role model for her students.
Provide at least one alternative strategy Jenny could have used which is constructivist in nature. Analysis should include advantages and disadvantages of this alternative approach.
Jenny could have brought in older students to explain the concepts and help students conduct some of the experiments she showed the students, to help shape the student's learning...
However, older students might not have the vocabulary to explain the experiments or notice when the younger students did not understand the point of the experiment.
Describe how you would teach this lesson to a class of 8th graders. How would you justify any changes?
Students at this age understand that even when they do not see air, air is still present as matter. Students could understand the concept of molecules and weight of air. Using ping-pong balls to more abstractly represent the more spaced-out molecules in air would be more appropriate with this age group, for example.
Discuss the present developmental stage which characterizes most eighth grade students in terms of Piaget's stage theory. Provide rationale as to your conclusion.
Students at the operational stage can understand number, length, liquid, mass, weight, area, volume and make use of logical and systematic manipulation of symbols related to concrete objects, as well as simply manipulate and understand the properties of concrete objects alone.
Discuss what developmental characteristics found in students of this age might effect the planning of such a science lesson.
A greater ability to understand abstraction allows the teacher to make use of symbols, to explain matter, as well as simply 'show' what air is, in familiar and observable terms.
Using this knowledge, discuss how they would set up a science lesson for eighth grade students involving the properties of air, and how such a lesson might differ from that of Jenny.
A constructivist's use of team-lab experiments would be more appropriate for this very social age, as students are anxious to please their peers, and Piaget's stages of development would allow students to be asked to demonstrate what cannot be seen, when air is undergoing its various properties. Also, students could be encouraged to move out of the familiar and seek out less immediately examples of the properties of air, such as in observable weather from their past or the newspaper.
