What is constructivist pedagogy?
A topic in teaching science
"Constructivist pedagogy…involves shifts between periods of teacher presentation and exposition, and periods when students engage with a range of individual and particularly group-work, some of which may seem quite open-ended. However, even during these periods, the teacher's role in monitoring and supporting is fundamental. Constructivism as a learning theory suggests that effective teaching needs to be both student-centred and teacher-directed…"
Taber, 2011, p.57
Constructivism has been widely adopted as a basis for thinking about teaching and learning. Constructivist pedagogy is not the name of a particular single teaching approach or strategy. Rather, this is an umbrella term for any pedagogy which is designed according to constructivism as theory of learning.
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Read about 'Constructivism'
A constructivist teacher may (some of the time at least) stand at the front of the class and present an account of subject matter to students. This could be considered constructivist if the teacher was taking into account, and linking to, students' prior learning and experiences; structuring material in the light of research into common learning difficulties; and using on-going formative assessment to adjust the teaching in the light of how learners were interpreting it.
The important criterion is that the teaching engages the learners' thinking so that students are actively making sense of teaching.
Read/view a lecture on Seven slogans for constructivist teachers: key ideas for teaching in accordance with learning theory
'Active' learning
Constructivism suggests students need to be active during learning, but this means their minds – and physical activity is not always a sign that students are actively thinking about the focal ideas of a class.
However, constructivist teaching has commonly been associated with techniques / approaches which limit the amount of class time spent listening to the teacher present. Generally, and especially with younger learners, such activities give more scope for active construction of meaning by students than extended periods of listening or reading (or viewing videos). Examples of activities that can be constructivist include:
- concept cartoons
- concept mapping
- D.A.R.T.s (directed activities related to text)
- discussion work (e.g., in dialogic teaching)
- enquiry (inquiry)
- flipped learning
- groupwork
- jigsaw learning
- peer tutoring
- predict-observe-explain
- project-based learning
- Socratic questioning / Socratic dialogue
The topic will be treated in more detail in a book being prepared for the RSC Advances in Chemistry Education series.
