Instructional Design and Technology
edX - UMUC University of Maryland University College
Oct- Dec 2017
My personal examples
The High School learning experience.
Constructivist learning scenario: I was listening to my teacher telling us something about Hume, or Locke, or Pascal. She was involving us with questions, making connections between different authors, linking their thoughts to our current days political, social, or even personal situations. As said, she wanted us to develop our own critical thinking. She was giving us hints to let us make our own path, in order to freely experiment our analysis capabilities and develop our own point of view.
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Skills in the ZPD: understanding each philosopher's thought, catching differences and similaritis. Develop our own critical thinking and being able to explain it to her and to peers.
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Scaffolding strategy: when we had to understand an abstract concept, she used to "put" that concept in a meaningful and real context: in this way, it was just like putting on the right glasses to see something that was blurry (situated learning). How could she find an effective context? Indeed she was not finding it: she used to ask us to think about some personal experiences we lived, experiences that were suitable background for that spectific concept.
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Social constructivist strategy: debates, discussions were the basis of her lessons. By listening to each other we were getting aware of how actual and close to us those old authors might become: who would have said that old thinker would have so well described the reality that many of us were living in our days?
And here is another experience I would like to share with you:
Constructivist learning scenario: During my year spent in a Business School we were given international marketing lessons aimed at understanding which are the conditions that would make a new product launch a successful one. We were given many tools, but what I remember most was the 4P by McCarthy: product, promotion, price and place. The teacher explained the theory referring to many real world examples and then involved us asking which was the marketing mix used by the company we were working for. Then the class have been divided into small groups and we were assigned the following case study: a multinational Company was studying the opportunity to introduce one of its product in a new Country. By analyzing the market condition of this Country and the 4Ps, we had to give our opinion about the opportunity or not to invest in such a project.
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Skills in the ZPD: apply the marketing mix in a specific context, team-working, assertiveness, analysis.
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Scaffolding strategy: of course the teacher knew exactly which was the strategy finally adopted by the Company. But during the discussion session among peers, he used to avoid revealing the solution to the problem, on the contrary he used to give us additional examples that might lead us to discover the right direction to take. Or, he used to make questions like “are you sure you are considering all economical variable? Do you find any similarity between Country X and Y?
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Social constructivist strategy: he asked each person of each group to present part of their final analysis to the entire class (reciprocal learning). He also invited the class to actively comment the presentations, adding suggestions and personal examples that might confirm or not the groups’ analysis (cooperative learning).
References:
- Constructivism and social constructivism in the classroom. (n.d.). Retrieved from Open Educational Resources of UCD:
- Constructivism and Vygotsky. (n.d.). Retrieved from edX Instructional Design and Technology: Learning Theories course:
- Lo scaffolding nel contesto educativo: definizione, teoria ed esempio. (2014, March 4). Retrieved from Orizzonte Scuola Didattica:
- Scaffolding. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaffolding
- Social constructivism. (n.d.). Retrieved from Berkeley Graduate Student Instructor: http://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/learning-theory-research/social-constructivism/
- Social constructivism. (n.d.). Retrieved from Emerging Perspective on Learning, Teaching and Technology: http://epltt.coe.uga.edu/index.php?title=Social_Constructivism
Let me give you a couple of personal learning expereinces as examples of Constructivism: here below you will find many elements of constructivistic approac, like cooperative learning, situated learning, debates and discussions, learning as a discovery process, questions and answers, intersubjectivity.