Rather than viewing learners as passive responders to stimuli, as they are seen in Behaviorism, Constructivists assert that learners must be actively engaged in their own learning processes. This school of thought started to dominate in the latter half of the 20th century. To provide an overview of the constructivist learning theory, I constructed (yes, constructed) the infographic below.
References
Cakir, M. (2008) Constructivist approaches to learning in science and their implications for science pedagogy: A literature review. International Journal of Environmental & Science Education 3(4): 193–206. Retrieved from http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/archive/fulltexts/3848.html
Cooper, P. A. (1993). Paradigm shifts in designed instruction: From Behaviorism to Cognitivism to Constructivism. Educational Technology, 33(5), 12-19.
Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4), 50-72.
I team-teach several Content & Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) courses in my institution to freshmen students with beginning level English skills. It is a huge challenge to teach to those who struggle with the medium through which it is taught.
One scenario that comes to mind to exemplify constructivist learning theory is the story of Buddha my partner and I teach in a religion class. Students may already know the story of Buddha, but some more than others, so the first part of the teaching scenario is to get all students up to speed. The story, and its significance toward understanding the Buddhist belief system, is presented through a reading and videos, which we provide through a downloadable handout and a video on Moodle. This part is flipped; students must read and watch as homework. Challenging vocabulary from the reading and video are presented through Quizlet.com, so students can work through the vocabulary in an engaging, fun manner at their own pace before class. Students are informed that they will be presenting the content in upcoming lesson(s).
In class, the content teacher lectures the story while I (the language teacher) take notes on the whiteboard (which is turned around so students do not see). Students also take notes at this time. Then I turn the whiteboard around so students can compare my notes with theirs, and listen to me repeat the story based on my notes that my teaching partner just presented. Next, in pairs students have to reconstruct in their own words to a partner what they have now read, watched on video, heard twice lectured, and taken notes on. Depending on class size and level, this may be broken down into two or more cycles or phases.
After they have constructed their understanding via paraphrased peer teaching, they then get into groups. Students then actively engage in collaboration to create a series off chronologically organized illustrations to represent what happens in the story of Buddha, from Siddhartha Gautama’s early days, to the four passing sights, to his enlightenment, to his teaching of the eightfold-path (although they do not go into detail about the eightfold-path at this point). During this time we teachers circulate to answer questions and offer feedback. Students draw their “comic strip” on a whiteboard assigned to their group.
In a series of repeated rotations, one student at a time then has to present the whole story of the Buddha to different groups of students, using the illustrations as prompts and visual support. Students get to anonymously vote on the best set of illustrations and best presenters, who get small prizes as incentive (they are told about these awards well beforehand).
As you can see, the same content was scaffolded through multiple steps and methods. Students have to read, watch, listen, rephrase, and present the same content. Learners get support and from the instructor and each other to assist them in constructing knowledge until at the end, they are able to teach the content on their own without assistance. The process starts with passive learning (reading, watching, listening; one-way direction of knowledge to the student), moves into active learning and social constructivism - wherein learners construct knowledge through interactions with others (two-way and multiple way direction of knowledge - students working together to construct knowledge in their Zone of Proximal Development - defined as the difference between what a learner is able to do without help and tasks or activities which a learner cannot do without guidance), and culminates in students presenting and teaching knowledge (back to one-way direction of knowledge, but this time BY the students). This order reflects Edgar Dale’s 1946 “Cone of Experience” which implies that learners retain a far larger proportion of what they actively do than what they passively read or hear (though some claim the percentages offered by later interpretations of his learning pyramid are dubious).
The peer teaching in pairs and the development of a socially constructed set of illustrations each represent students working in their Zone of Proximal Development (ZDP), since students are working to fill in gaps in their understanding by interacting with others. Students had many opportunities to practice speaking English through the processes. Note that this stage of their learning process, although students were engaged in the construction of knowledge, they were not yet challenged to engage in some higher-order thinking skills, such as analyzing, critiquing, or comparing. (see Bloom’s Taxonomy).