Social Constructivism: Implications on Teaching and Learning (Published)
The purpose of this paper was to look at social constructivism as a learning theory and its implications on teaching methods, students’ learning motivation and the entire teaching/learning process. Social constructivism is a collaborative form of learning based on interaction, discussion and knowledge sharing among students. The teacher’s role is to employ teaching methods that that are learner centred and collaborative in nature. The underlying factor is that learners work together in groups sharing ideas, finding answers to problems or just creating something new to add to existing knowledge. This learning theory deemphasizes teacher-monotony in the classroom, but encourages active interaction among learners, the teacher and other components of the teaching learning process. It also concretizes learning and knowledge by making students retain the facts that they discover and construct by themselves than those they are told by the teacher among other benefits.
Keywords: Constructivism, Implications, Learning, Social, Teaching
Relative Effectiveness of Constructivism and Meta-Learning Teaching Methods on Students’ Academic Achievement and Retention in Basic Electricity in Technical Colleges (Published)
The study determined the relative effectiveness of constructivism and meta-learning teaching methods on academic achievement and retention of basic electricity among Technical College students. A quasi-experimental research design was adopted. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 108 students from four technical colleges in Anambra State. Two technical colleges each were randomly selected to experimental group one and other two technical colleges to experimental group two. Experimental group one used constructivism teaching method while the experimental group two used meta-learning teaching method. The instrument for data collection was Basic Electricity Achievement Test (BEAT). BEAT was developed by the researchers and validated by three experts in the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. Kuder Richardson 20 formula was used to determine the reliability of the instrument which yielded reliability co-efficient of 0.87. Data collected for the study were analyzed using mean for research questions and ANCOVA for null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the study revealed that constructivism teaching method had a significant effect on students’ achievement when compared to meta-learning teaching method. Also the study showed that meta-learning teaching method had a significant effect on students’ retention ability. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that teachers of basic electricity should adopt the teaching methods that incorporate constructivism teaching method and meta-learning teaching method in teaching and learning of basic electricity in order to enhance knowledge mastery and retention among students.
Keywords: Academic Achievement, Basic Electricity, Constructivism, Meta-learning, Retention, Technical Colleges
The Place of Literature in a Task-Based Language Teaching Classroom: The Futo Experience (Published)
This paper examined the deployment of literature texts in the teaching of language using the task-based constructive approach. The theory of constructivist language learning is one which advocates a learner-centred, task-based approach, contrary to older teaching methods where the teacher dominates the classroom or where rote learning is encouraged. In a constructivist learning situation, the learner discovers new knowledge for himself as he undertakes certain language tasks with the guidance of the teacher-facilitator. This paper studied the use of literature texts, rather than isolated constructed sentences, as material for language tasks in the teaching of Use of English at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO). The two areas of language examined in the paper were coherence in text organization and descriptive writing. The use of literature texts was found to be closer to authentic data than de-contextualised constructed sentences and, therefore, challenged and excited the learners more. The paper recommends a greater adoption of literature texts and other texts taken from real-life or near real-life situations as material in task-based learning.
Keywords: Constructivism, Task-Based Language Teaching, literature texts in language teaching
Research on the Strategy-Based Instruction of News Broadcast Listening For English Minors in China (Published)
News broadcast, as a kind of authentic input, are invaluable materials to improve listening proficiency for both ESL and EFL learners. However, the particular characteristics of news broadcast present a number of challenges to achieving comprehension: unfamiliar patterns of discourse, vocabulary, speech rates, syntactic structures, and a high density of factual contents, etc. In this paper, based on the Constructivism views on education, the author chooses 86 English learners in China who take English as their second major as the research subjects, carries out a strategy-based instruction to the experimental group. After the 15-week instruction, the author collects and analyses the data to examine whether the strategy-based instruction would help students improve their news listening performance.
Keywords: Authentic Input, Constructivism, News Broadcast Listening, Strategies., Strategy-Based Instructions
A Constructivist Appraisal of Paulo Freire’s Critique of Banking System of Education (Published)
Education is considered a prerequisite for all individuals to make meaningful impact in their society. It enlightens the individuals and engrains in them the capacity to develop critical ability that would enable them transform their society in the best way they can. However, the actual teaching method and the structure of the curricula across the tiers of learning seem to have defeated this basic purpose of education. In most cases, education has been designed as an instrument of conservatism, where the learner becomes a passive receptor of certain knowledge. This makes the learner unproductive and sterile so much so that rather than the learner utilizing the knowledge acquired, the learner gives value to the certificate awarded. Paulo Freire considers this method of education as a banking system of education, which for him is a dangerous approach to impacting knowledge. He suggests problem-posing as the alternative model to the banking system of education. This alternative model engrains in the learner the liberty to develop thinking abilities, which aid such person to contribute in the learning process. This model conceives education as a kind of symbiotic method of learning. While we appreciate Freire’s alternative model, our work assesses it as inadequate. This paper therefore aims at exposing the limitations and pragmatic bankruptcy of a problem-posing pedagogy as espoused by Freire in contradistinction to a problem-solving type of education, which our paper strongly advocates. Our study also underscores the fact that it is not enough for a learner to participate in the learning process, which only results in posing problem. Adopting the constructivist approach, this paper strongly argues that the most appropriate model that gives the learner that huge independent capacity to transform the society is the problem-solving type. Through this model, the learner develops critical abilities to address societal and contextual problems.
Keywords: Banking System., Conscientization., Constructivism, Education, Pedagogy
Constructivism Philosophical Paradigm: Implication for Research, Teaching and Learning (Published)
The constructivism philosophical paradigm is an efficient tool that can yield many benefits when implemented in the carrying out of research in diverse field of study as well as in undertaking teaching and learning activities at any educational level. There was the need to adopt the qualitative research’s powerful tool thus, document analysis to present a literature review on the subject to enlighten researchers and teachers of the great imports, rich and useful information that they can glean from this vibrant paradigm of philosophy. The paper projects, how researchers can be coached with this philosophical paradigm in their selection of research design, instrumentation, theoretical framework and data analysis procedures. It recommends viable instructional strategies that teachers can employ for instructing learners in the constructivist approach. The paper contends strongly that the constructivism philosophical paradigm provides a firm foundation for researches, especially in humanities, education and other behavioral researches while maximizing students’ learning outcomes when employed in teaching and learning activities.
Keywords: Constructivism, Education, Instructional Strategies, Philosophy, Research
