Constructivism, Is it good?
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I’ve followed the workshop on how to change the method of teaching from teacher centered to student centered learning three years ago. I’m not a teacher, but my job as a programmer for educational institution requires me to know a little about education. And I think this was my first experience being introduced with ‘constructivism’. We had been told to leave old teaching paradigm. Instead just ‘feed’ students with all of information and want them to remember, we need to find way how to make students actively found the information and solve problems by themselves.
With this constructivism approach, Students will learn more because they are actively involved in their own learning process; Students are invited to perform investigation/exploration and find something by themselves. Students are invited to interact with real environments and contextual, and therefore they will build their own knowledge. Students will learn to be active and will reach the ability to think critically and solve problems in a systemic / holistic approach. And in the end will master the content as well as the process.
Sound ideal isn’t it? In reality, based on my experience working with teacher, creating environment, instruction, or activities that support student centered learning are harder than just giving the lecture material to the students especially for old generation teacher. Problems also come from the students itself. Some students may not ready with this approach especially for passive students. Forcing the approach to this type of learner will only lead to poor outcomes. In my opinion, completely changed from the old teaching methods to the new teaching method (constructivism approach) methods cannot be done in full scale. We need to use compromistic approach to bridge between these two methods. Combining these two methods will give active students the opportunity to build on their knowledge but also did not leave the passive students by giving them the lecture and also encourage them to become more active.