martes, 16 de junio de 2015

POST #5: Social Constructivism & Meaningful Learning.

According to Vygotsky's Social Constructivism, social and cultural interactions play an important part in the learning process of a child and knowledge is co-constructed, which means individuals learn from one another.

Taking into account Lev's theory (And we could also say Piaget's theory, given that as a constructivist he agrees with Vygotsky on this statement), I think group work is just as important as individual work. The most important factors to have in mind are the learning level and also the importance of organising group-work.
Group work can be applied in the classroom in several ways. First, let's start by saying they shouldn't be grouped just randomly. For example, the children should be grouped such that the students who understand the content work with the students who do not. Let's imagine, if a student did not understand a word, the teacher could have another student explain the definition to them. The more able peer might use different language than the teacher did but the student's phrasing might make more sense to the other student. What's more, the more able student would also learn something, perhaps a deeper understanding of the word or a way to explain the concept that they had not thought of before, that is why it is important to encourage group learning.

We shouldn't forget we are talking about children here; teachers need to learn to see the children, to listen to them, to know when they are feeling some distance from us. Otherwise it wouldn't be strange to find that they, as a group, couldn't keep up with the activities assigned. We should give the learner the right amount of assistance at the right time. The goal should be to
provide temporary support that will later be removed as the child acquires, and eventually masters, new skills.
For instance, graphic organizers and pictures can serve as scaffolding tools. Pictures are very specific in that they help kids visually represent their ideas and organize information, similar to what Piaget established with his four stages.

On the other hand, we have got American psychologist David Paul Ausubel. Ausubel's theory focuses on meaningful learning. According to his theory, to learn meaningfully, individuals must relate new knowledge to relevant concepts they already know. He believes that people acquire knowledge primarily through reception, not discovery. This new knowledge must interact with the learner’s knowledge structure. Let's suppose you know a kind of tree that has green leaves but the teacher gives you a tree that has red leaves. In order to accommodate this new information, you have to alter or extend your concept of tree to include this new possibility of red leaves.


Once again I find, as it always happens in education, that there is no black and white here. What I mean is that there's no need to have Vygotsky on the right hand and Ausubel on the left hand. I find for example that Vygotsky's scaffolding idea completely matches and relates to Ausubel's prior knowledge idea. If we imagine for a second that a teacher asks a student to share their own experiences and ideas about the content and have them relate and connect it to their own life, the teacher will find sometimes you may have to offer hints and suggestions, leading them to the connections a bit, but once they get there, they will grasp it as their own. It makes me wonder, if we launch learning in the classroom from the prior knowledge of our students and use this as a model for future lessons, shouldn't it be considered a scaffolding technique?

Since I haven't worked as a teacher in a school yet, sometimes I don't feel qualified to say what, if any, is the ideal theory to be used in the actual practice. However, from my experience as an English student I see that sometimes teachers have to work beyond these theories and work with a mixture of theories of learning and child development. That's why I think this isn't the exception, there's no "best option" here, both Vygotsky and Ausubel theories have had an impact on education practices. Therefore, as future teachers, they both can make a difference in our development as we grow from our own experiences throughout the process; we should make use of everything they have given us in an interrelated way.

1 comentario:

  1. You have made some connections, you might find other points of view later during the course. Remember to move from the theory to the practice, you will certainly start to do so once you start sitting in on lessons.

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