The Application of Constructivism in Middle School English Teaching文献综述

 2022-08-15 09:47:03

Literature review

  • The concept of constructivism

Constructivism is a branch of cognitive psychology, and it is first introduced by Swiss psychologist Piaget in the 1960s. Meanwhile, constructivism also scoop the essence of various theories of learning theory, such as historical and cultural psychology theory of Lev Vygotsky, the meaning learning theory of Ausubel, and the discovery learning theory of Bruner and so on. Thus, it reveals the cognitive law of the human learning process quite well.

Constructivism is a theory of learning which posits that students learn by actively constructing their own knowledge (von Glasersfeld 1996; Fosnot 1996; Duffy and Cunningham 1996). According to von Glasersfeld (1995, 5), “Concepts cannot simply be transferred from teachers to students——they have to be conceived.” Learning is a process that involves active construction and not passive acquisition (Duffy and Cunningham 1996). Thus, in constructivism, the familiar and inaccurate metaphor of the mind as a container waiting to be filled is replaced by the metaphor of the mind as an agent actively seeking to satisfy its curiosity and resolve troubling issues.

By referring to the relevant literature, we can identify some main principles of the constructivism as follows: firstly, Vgotsky(1978) stresses that constructivism takes students to the center, students are the main body of learning, the main body of cognition and information processing, and the active constructors of the meaning of knowledge. The amount of knowledge that students acquire depends on the learners ability to construct knowledge based on their own experience. As a teacher, their mission is to help and promote studentrsquo;s learning. lt;Secondly, constructivism includes problem-solving: Doing mathematics does not mean only knowing to directly apply definitions, theorems and properties, but engaging in activities which require solving problems by utilizing these definitions, theorems and properties. Problem-solving allows students to construct concepts and to apply them to problematic situations. This therefore gives them an opportunity to go beyond given information or to develop their own ideas. The problem situations designed for students should reflect the real life outside the classroom. If its degree is well adjusted, students can easily use their abilities in other problem-solving situations. Thirdly, constructivism asks students to interpret and elaborate, this means that the learners should not be contented with being an active processor of knowledge, but they should interpret and elaborate upon the knowledge. What is expected from the students is to internalize knowledge by processing, but not to have the knowledge by accumulating.

  • Six elements in constructivist classrooms

Gagnon amp;collay(2001) and others have conducted systematic studies of the theory of constructivism and summarized the six basic elements of Constructivist Learning Design(CLD) in the Designing for Learning: Six Elements in Constructivist Classrooms: Developing Situations, Asking Questions, Building Bridges, Organizing Groupings, Arranging Exhibits and Inviting Reflections.

Developing Situations asks teacher should create a learning situation that is relevant to the current learning topic, the content of the course and the teaching objectives. The creation of the situation must be conducive to the construction of the course content. Teacher can provide real or simulated language learning environments through movies, recording, video, and VCD programming and network resources (i.e., original English film, foreign language news and biography). Also, teachers can integrate the teaching content into the visual teaching situation by the visual teaching aids, material object, slide, picture and blackboard drawing to arouse students associations and motivate them to participate in interactive learning.

Asking Questions is a kind of teaching method advocated by constructivism, the aim of asking question is to stimulate the students thinking. In the process of teaching, Gagnon (2001) points out that teacher should not to cultivate the students problem consciousness, but also to be good at digging through the material, to create various kinds of problem situation, encourage and guide students to explore the problem from multiple angles and multiple levels. In fact, the teaching process is a process of questioning, doubts and explains the doubts, is to teach students to learn, improve learning ability, is also the process of cultivating students innovation ability and practice ability. Accordingly, teachers should guide and train students to think, judge and solve problems from different angles, so that they can learn how to study and innovate in the solution of problems. Sanders (1966) points out that “Good questions should have broad thinking space or high value of inquiry”, so we can say that an open, timely and appropriate question can well motivate students to search for results and to seek for the new knowledge.

Building Bridges：Constructivism believes that the primary task of teachers should be determined how much students know about new knowledge to learn, so they carry out targeted teaching work better. As Lee Shulman (1999) says before learning any new knowledge, teacher can help students to review the previous knowledge, which is the bridge between the existing knowledge and the new knowledge. Piaget (1973) brings forward the concept of 'imbalance' between the existing schema and the existing experience and Vgotsky (1986) also raises the concept that teachers should help students learn the new knowledge based on the learned knowledge. These two concepts can be used as a classical explanation of the influence of old knowledge on new knowledge in constructivism.

Organizing Groupings is also the key factors of constructivism teaching. Schmucks (1997) points out that the key to the design of constructivist learning is how to grouping and how to help students work together to complete the task of learning. Therefore, when students complete the specified learning task, teachers can divide students into several study groups according to different teaching objectives, and ask students to adopt different collaborative approach to work together to complete their learning task.

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