In von Glasersfeld's theory of constructivism he uses the term constructing knowledge rather than acquiring knowledge. He does this because a student is not given knowledge but rather builds on what he or she already knows. Everything we know is constructed from things we observe and experience in life. For this reason one can not simply acquire information but must be able to relate it to something that they already have concluded to be true.
This is important for teachers today because teachers need to be able to teach in such a way that students can construct knowledge properly. One way to do this would be to relate new math concepts to past concepts that have already been mastered. This will allow students to be able to build on concepts that they have already found to be true. This is a constructivism way of teaching because it promotes constructing knowledge from interpretations that we have already made from experience.
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For some reason your description of constructivism really intrigued me. The way you discussed constructing knowledge seems obvious after reading it but it wasn't something that had occurred to me previously. I was glad to see that you continued on in your discussion of implementation with the same idea. You created a strong topic sentence by relating it back to your initial paragraph. After finishing the post, I was left feeling that I had missed something. I think I would have liked to see a more concrete example of how to implement this building block idea to a specific concept. In the end, it was a wonderful overview!
ReplyDeleteYou are really good at writing in a concise and clear way while still including lots of information. I think that your idea for implementing constructivism would be effective and something that you could definitely do. Your paragraph flowed nicely and I thought you did a great job.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you were able to explain in great detail in such a small paragraph. Wordy things are unnecessary so good job! I also liked what you thought could be done in classes now to help construct knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThe ideas you gave in how you can teach from a constructivist point of view were great! A crucial aspect that did seem missing however was how you plan to implement these ideas. A specific example would add more force to the good ideas you already gave. Good job!
ReplyDeleteYou did a good job describing constructing knowledge. There are times, when we constructing knowledge, that we need to throw out things that we considered to be true before. This is part of the constructing knowledge. When we come across an experience that doesn't fit our knowledge, then something must change.
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