I am a chemistry faculty in university. Before
joining University I was working in an apex
organization
meant for pomoting and supporing secondary education.
There I took interest in science education research
and I was attracted by constructivism. I have read the
book Human Brain and Human Learning by Leslie A. Hart
which talks about the mechanism of brain learning and
constructivism. I strongly believe that real long term
higher cognitive level learning can occur only through
constructivist learning.

I have gone through literature regarding
constuctivist learning. I was actually looking for an
instructional stategy for constructivist chemistry
learning. What i have found in my literature search
and analysis is that we have miainterpreted the term
constructivist learning to independent learning or
learning by research. This is the cause of failiure of
the philosophy of constructivism. Lack of suitable
instructional design and appropriate strategy is the
reason for failiure. For constructivism to be
successful, to be implemented in the classrooms the
urgent need is identification of a strategy that
matches the way of brain learning.

I have identified that the instructional strategy
"PATTERN RECOGNITION' (Teaching School Chemistry, Dr.
J Waddington,Sterling Publications (1984) is an
appropriate strategy for constructivist learning. I
have developed intructional designs on some topics in
organic chemistry and tested with small group and
found useful. The need of the hour is to desensitize
the teachers and students to the convensional
reception learning method and to encourage to adopt a
brain compatible learning stategy. If any body is
interested in publishing my concept paper entitled " A
Brain compatible instructional strategy for
constructivist Chemistry learning" which illustrates
the theme and participate in coolaborative research
for implementing in the class room may contact me.

G.Vasuki
dwarw jhdfkc <dwarakeshan@...> wrote:

>
>
> david_geelan <dgeelan@...> wrote:Hi All
>
> My friend and colleague Frank Jenkins, a member of
> this list,
> forwarded Andreas Georgiou's questions about
> constructivism to me
> because he thought I might be interested. I was, so
> here I am! (But
> these opinions shouldn't be seen as reflecting on
> Frank!)
>
> I've considered constructivism in a number of
> papers, but Geelan
> (1997) is probably the most relevant to these
> questions, as well as
> the most comprehensive. Some of the points below are
> discussed in more
> detail there.
>
> These are really just a few comments, in no
> particular order, in
> relation to the interesting questions Andreas
> raised:
>
> 1. There's not really such a thing as
> 'constructivism' - there are so
> many different 'brands' and forms of constructivism,
> some with
> dramatically different commitments and philosophical
> underpinnings,
> that talking about a unitary 'constructivism' is a
> recipe for
> confusion. The fact that many teacher education
> programs do this is
> unfortunate, and something we should be correcting.
>
> 2. The claim that the 'real' world is either
> eternally unknowable or
> non-existent (i.e. that reality itself is a pure
> mental construct) is
> really on the border between epistemology and
> ontology - between a
> statement of what we can know about the world, and a
> statement about
> the nature of reality. Such claims (von Glasersfeld
> is one who makes
> them most strongly) are philosophically interesting,
> in my opinion,
> but not enormously useful in education. Their main
> usefulness is to
> remind us about the theory-ladenness of
> observations: constructivism
> (and lots of other recent philosophy of science)
> suggests that we do't
> have *unmediated* access to the natural world - what
> we see depends to
> some extent on what we're looking for, and what we
> already know.
>
> 3. I agree with Andreas' point that claiming
> constructivism is a
> universal theory of education is philosophically
> suspect, but it's
> also just educationally impractical. I hold this
> opinion for two reasons:
> (i) The complexity of educational contexts means
> there are no panaceas
> - we should be expanding our theoretical toolboxes
> and seeking
> alternative descriptions, rather than committing to
> a single theory. I
> regard constructivism, and all other educational
> theories, as *useful*
> rather than *true* - the standards that are applied
> to them are those
> of utility for learning. and
> (ii) constructivism is actually a theory about
> knowledge. From that,
> we can derive, in some way, theories about teaching
> and learning, but
> that derivation includes the introduction of other
> theories and ideas.
> I'd argue that there's no single constructivist
> learning theory,
> simply because of these extra, often unacknowledged,
> steps. If
> constructivism is being presented unproblematically
> as a learning
> theory, that's a problem!
>
> Frederick Steier (1995) has talked about the `naïve
> constructivism'
> that involves researchers attempting to objectively
> study others'
> construction processes, and suggests that we're all
> construing, all
> the time.
>
> 4. It's important to make a distinction between the
> notions 'students
> are constructing their own understandings of
> scientific knowledge' and
> 'students are constructing new scientific
> knowledge'. I think many
> 'constructivist' prescriptions for teaching err in
> the direction of
> the latter - give students some apparatus and let
> them construct the
> entire corpus of knowledge of hundreds of years of
> Western science!
> That's unrealistic of course - even if only because
> they'd come up
> with an idiosyncratic terminology and be unable to
> communicate with
> other scientists. Constructivism is a theory about
> knowledge and how
> it grows, and what students are constructing is
> their own
> understanding of science. There's nothing
> 'constructivistically
> incorrect' about comparing their developing
> understandings with clear
> explanations of what science has found so far.
>
> 5. A conception of constructivist teaching that
> would not allow a
> teacher to, for example, suggest that students
> improve their
> experimental procedures or graphing techniques to
> allow them to
> distinguish between the possibility that period of a
> pendulum is
> directly proportional to length and the square root
> of length seems
> like a very impoverished one. I agree that some of
> the more
> doctrinaire proponents of constructivism overstate
> the peripheral
> nature of teaching activity (and the New Zealand
> case fits that
> label), but even a 'guide on the side' owes it to
> students to guide
> their experimental interactions with the world in
> such a way that
> valid (in the sense of fitting well with both the
> kinds of careful
> experiences of the world we find in well conducted
> experiments and
> with accepted scientific knowledge) explanations are
> constructed.
> Tarring sensible, responsible constructivist
> theorists with
> irresponsible statements made in constructism's name
> is unfortunate.
>
> 6. I think that, as an epistemological theory, free
> of ontological
> trappings about the nature of reality, various of
> the brands of
> constructivism are internally consistent and
> sustainable. When it
> comes to deriving theories of learning and teaching,
> I think there
> exist very interesting, plausible, fruitful ones
> derived from
> constructivism. There also exist some that are
> arrant nonsense! It's
> part of our activity as educators to choose and use
> the good, and to
> eschew or challenge the bad.
>
> Warm regards,
>
>
> David Geelan
>
> Geelan, D.R. (1997). Epistemological anarchy and the
> many forms of
> constructivism. Science & Education, 6(1-2), 15-28.
>
> Steier, F. (1995). From universing to conversing: An
> ecological
> constructionist approach to learning and multiple
> description, in L.P.
> Steffe and J. Gale (eds.), Constructivism in
> Education, Lawrence
> Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
>
>
> PS I'm not sure what the conventions are on this
> list, but most lists
> I've joined ask new members for a brief
> introduction. Here's mine -
> ignore it if you're not interested.
>
> I'm Sue's husband and Cassie and Alex's dad. I'm an
> Australian from
> Sydney, currently enjoying life in Edmonton, Canada.
> I'm an assistant
>
=== message truncated ===





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