And people wonder why teachers feel underpaid...

True, for once.

 

Constructivism could conceivably work very well, in the proper environment. But in US, and I suspect it is the same in France, going to school isn't a priviliege, or even a right, it's required by law. The children are forced to be there, and the schools are forced to keep them, no matter what they do.

So for a constructivist classroom to work, you must have 100% willing participation. In other words you must have the ability to toss the kids who don't want to take part, who are just there to take up space and cause trouble.

So constructivism could only work in a a select private school setting. Or perhaps in a charter school setting.

I'd love to have the opportunity to work in public school environment where attendance was a privilege, not a right or a requirement. I think it would make all the difference in the world.

 

Wouldn't count on that one. I've never been to a public school so I don't have anything to compare to really besides what my friends have told me but we've gotten away plenty of times with getting nothing done. 8th grade spanish is coming to mind, we always managed to get out of class early, change the subject, get the guy off topic, and we got to have a random party every week for some holdiday we just made up off the top of our heads. Consequently when we got into high school we couldn't really speak spanish all that well but private school kids aren't little studious angels. They had to pull people out of the computer lab playing games and put them in the library and make them act like they were studying for some pictures they were taking and putting on a CD rom for prospective families. No one actually studies in the library, I think we all intend to, but we usually wind up talking and only getting a fraction of the work done. That much said my school also has its fair share of stoners who usually manage to not let it affect their work too much

 

You'd also hate to live in a city that followed that rule. In Brazil, for all grades, they have a morning, afternoon, and I think evening session (I think the evening maybe just for upperclassmen high school students). They have the basic courses and that's it. That basically gives kids the opportunity to run around and do troublesome and annoying things. At just about every major street, there are kids waiting for cars to stop at traffic lights so they can sell stuff to people as they wait for the green light. You're gonna have kids asking for a couple bucks so they can watch your car as you go to the corner store for five minutes. You're also gonna have kids asking for a few dollars so they can carry yours shopping bags to your car. Now, this isn't just a problem caused by the education system, but I'm sure American kids will find even more unconstructive things to do with their new spare time. Keep these kids in school where they are occupied for most of the day. Not everyone drops out when they are 16, so that means some of these punks want to hang around, so let them. If it means having them in a special class, so be it. As long as they aren't doing foolish things out in public, it's all good. At least in school there's more eyes watching them.

 

Funny. This describes about half the kids in the program I was part of in high school. Amazingly enough, they're the ones going to Harvard and Vanderbilt and the like.

It's not about the kids look like. It's whether or not they learn to be responsible for themselves.

In school I was forced to learn certain things but then given a lot of freedom to concentrate on the things I wanted to learn. I think this is the best way to do it. It probably helped that we wanted to be there and we wanted to learn.

Our teachers were very flexible with assignments. Even though we had periods for each subject, teachers would switch so they could have a longer class or let students who were ahead in lessons leave to finish art projects, start labs that would be missed, etc.

We weren't told too often "You must write about this" but we were given options or free choice. (Random: The best book assignments were always the ones where we picked a paragraph or a sentence and gave our reaction to it.)

Most parents don't try as much as they should anymore. Creating rules and communicating with kids seems to be the most effective way to create accountibility.

Parents are kids' first teachers and some parents completely fail to remember that. Even after my mom started working again when my youngest sister was two she would still spend a couple hours a day and a few more hours on her days off teaching Jill, reading with her, watching the news and discussing it, and listening to music. My mom did this with all of us (even me when she was still enlisted and working 50 hrs a wk). When you work that much, picking good people to watch the kids is also very important. I went to a Dutch preschool, wasn't forced to learn the language, started learning all the basic preschool stuff and had a lot of time to play and go on field trips.

 

Do you have a private school that lets people in just because they have the cash, or do you actually have to apply (like college). That would make a tremendous difference in how they act.

 

it's generally a mix. We offer scholarships to people based on merit and there is financial aid but no one gets in unless they're smart and they will kick you out if they think you can't cut it. They've kicked out kindergarteners before because apparently they can tell that young if the're cut out for it, they also kick out kids in high school, they did it to a girl in my class 2 years ago, but she never really came to school in the first place. Basically you're there if you're smart, most people do have money but there are a few without so much money who are there on scholarship or are recieving finacial aid

 

Constructivism and/or Piaget cannot be dismissed as garbage; some (a lot?) of what passes as constructivism certainly can be.

Consider an objective for an 8th grade science class:

Student will be able to formulate and test a hypothesis and evaluate conflicting hypotheses.

I could teach this in many ways. Here's a sample "constructivist" lesson plan that achieves all four of the items listed in dj43's (very good) steps:

1. Students will follow a series of steps, cookbook type recipe of the style normally found in "lab manuals". In this case the student attaches a candle to a pie plate with modeling clay, adds water, covers burning candle with flask and observes qualitative and quantitative results (these last two terms are described prior in a mini-lecture with examples. Measuring instruments are provided [cylinders, stopwatch, possibly limewater as a reagent to put in the water...).

2. The procedure is demonstrated before students have a chance to do it, so in this case dj43's precepts are being held, just in a different order.

3. Let's say thirty minutes. After 30 minutes groups or pairs of students will put up a poster "t-diagram" with their qualitative and quantitative observations and share them with the class.

4. There are some different ways of doing this. The teacher can make his/her own poster in advance and/or provide a rubric (check out the rubistar site if you want sample rubrics for any occasion--google it).

These four steps are just the beginning. In the next lessons the student is given an opportunity to form a hypothesis. Then the student is given conflicting hypotheses and has to go back to the collective observations of the class to see which hypothesis fits the evidence.

It's effective. And it's constructivist.

The fact is, some topics lend themselves very well to constructivism and others don't. This is to reiterate what Jason M. (I think?) said. A teacher with only one set of tricks is doomed.