Constructivism

Hello everyone! It's me again 💓

Weeks ago I made a post about constructivism theory and now it's time to elaborate a little bit more on it. I will try to mention some new information that I found regarding to this topic.

"To often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve".

Have you have heard this quote before? If not, let me explain to you 🤗

When it comes to teaching, the majority of people think that it's an easy process; all you have to do is to appear in class, ask questions, evaluate pupils answers and that's it. Well that is wrong. Teaching requires a lot of hard work, professional skills and motivation. A good teacher should always find out ways how to include everyone in the classroom. It's not easy to make pupils cooperate with each other but with the right strategies, everything is possible 😄

Of course, each activity or game should serve as a way to help pupils gain new knowledge while having fun. An activity is not successful if its just entertaining but the teacher should use activities as a way to achieve a common goal. By working in pairs or individually, pupils construct their knowledge themselves rather than just taking the new information in a passive way. That is called the constructivism theory.

"We learn more by doing". I am sure we all have heard this statement before. It is completely true that when we experience things on our own, we tend to remember things better. At the beginning of the post I wrote a quote that implies the mistakes that teachers often do. In traditional teaching, most of the time, pupils are asked to memorise things by heart. But do these memories last? From my personal experience, I can guarantee that this is the worst strategy that a teacher can use. Teaching is not successful if pupils only know how to reproduce the information from the book, because later on that information will disappear. It will not exist anymore. But, when you push pupils to solve problems, to think in a critical way, than you can say " yes I'm a great teacher". That is the goal that every teacher should be able to achieve. Constructivism theory highlights the importance of letting pupils experience things on their own. Only in that way they will be able to think critically and become more creative.

In a few words, learning by heart must stop. Reproducing information is a weak strategy that later on will not function. It is time to let pupils experience things; to let them construct their knowledge on their own. Only in this way we can say that we have educated successful children 🤗

See you next week. Let me know if you find  this post helpful and if you have any suggestion, please leave a comment!

Sara 💗