Steve Stahl (sstahl@together.net)
Sat, 10 Apr 1999 14:39:18 -0400
From: "Steve Stahl" <sstahl@together.net> Subject: RE: Constructivist learning Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 14:39:18 -0400
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Hello John and/or Tracy:
I would like to suggest an alternative view to some of the "beliefs" you
have presented in your post supporting teacher-directed instruction. I
would consider my statements below to be only my "beliefs" as well,
regardless of how strongly I may believe in them. I feel that this same
respect needs to be afforded to all learners regardless of the
teacher-student relationship, if one expects deep reflection and
investigation to occur among learners. In general, I have found a
teacher-centered learning environment does not afford this.
You wrote "I have found that student centered learning has very deep
problems. The first of which is that students all come to the classroom
with preconceived ideas (schema) of how the world works. They will fit
observations into those ideas while completely ignoring divergent data."
(Can we really believe the teacher does not have preconceived notions as
well?)
I would consider the fact that students come to the learning environment
with preconceived ideas to be beneficial, not problematic. the more diverse
the ideas that students have in my class, the more learning I believe will
occur! I would also suggest that it is the instructors responsibility to
work with the student's divergent thinking to place students and their
preconceived notions (along with divergent data) in direct contact with each
other ( I am clearly a supporter of collaborative learning).
When an instructor creates a respectful atmosphere in which students can
feel safe to express ideas and to later come to new conclusions, a great
deal of learning can occur. Each student becomes, in Vygotskian terms, a
scaffold for others in the class (in their individual zones of proximal
development) each of whom may be incorporating different aspects of a
situation into their own schema. In other words, I see the development of a
planned learning sequence ( a series of learning tasks) and structured
interaction between students as a responsibility of the instructor to
facilitate. This provides students with the opportunity, and the need to
fully articulate the basis of their beliefs, to understand the points of
divergence, and the opportunity to reconsider consequences of particular
actions. If an instructor is not able to overcome student failure to
consider other data to reach conclusions, then this in my opinion is a
deficit in the instructional plan and/or its implementation.
But I sense an underlying sentiment from your paragraph that assumes the
instructor is correct and the student wrong (even on issues that are not in
based in pure fact). If this attitude is conveyed to the students (and if
that attitude is there, it will certainly be conveyed) then the possibility
of creating an environment where safety to explore, contribute and to
disagree will be greatly diminished if not eliminated completely. The very
factors needed for students to work together to consider and incorporate
divergent data will be absent. Then students work to get the answer the
teacher wants to hear, rather than an answer they truly can believe in. The
end result is the correct answers on the test and a different way of
functioning in the real world.
I would suggest that if we each examine our strongly held beliefs of 25
years ago, we would disagree with many of them now (though we would have
been willing to teach them as correct then). So, who are we as teachers to
say that the learner's decisions about their own learning are incorrect?
Also written in your post was: "I have yet to see anything on the web that
is as good as a well written text book."
I have read some excellent articles on the Internet. Comparing the depth
that an article can go into compared to a book, however, IMHO is not a fair
comparison. When referring to articles, many full text databases are
available (for a fee) and many universities provide access to students to
these resources. And of course why not include text books too? I wouldn't
want to read a book off a monitor myself!
Steve
Steve Stahl
Associate Director &
Statewide CDA Training Program Coordinator
The Family Center of Washington County
Doctoral Student in Instructional Technology and Distance Education (ITDE 2)
Nova Southeastern University
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