YES, THE UNDEAD CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING VAMPIRE, EVEN WITH STAKE IN HEART, IS ALIVE AND WELL AND CONTINUES ITS HARMFUL WAYS
Ever hear about the casualty lists that continued, even after a formal truce was signed? Sometimes it took months for the word to get to the front lines of the old wars. Of course, they did not have the technology we have today to get the word out to the front lines — instantly !
Here is one declaration about Constructivism’s rejection by a leading promoter that’s already 10 years old! How many Constructivist casualties in that time period?
“I have abandoned the constructivist paradigm as a useful theory for articulating and explaining knowledgeability and changes in observable behaviors. …[this] because it turned out to be plagued with considerable contradictions.” (Roth, W.-M. 2006) Learning science: A singular plural perspective, p. 326)
A dozen years earlier this same author had been saying: “Constructivist teachers view themselves as gardeners, tour guides, learning councillors or facilitators rather than as dispensers of information or judges of right and wrong answers.”
The aim of constructivist science teaching was to turn students into constructivists. Again, the same author’s quote is instructive: “Thus, science educators seek to help teachers in changing from worldviews that are commensurable with objectivism to ones that are commensurable with constructivism.”
On another thread I had posted information regarding material to read about how Constructivism had migrated from Reading Wars to Math Wars to, now, Science Wars.
Constructivism As It Affects Science Teaching
I read this article while it was still available FREE in January according to publishing rules, but then it became costly. I had recommended it to many people. It is now again FREE due to the author’s intervention.
I recommend it highly. Reflections on 25 Years of Journal Editorship https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276458457_Reflections_on_25_Years_of_Journal_Editorship
Michael R Matthews chronicles his editing of a Journal devoted to teachers who teach SCIENCE in Schools. It is the Sections 10, 11, 12 that deal specifically with how CONSTRUCTIVISM made inroads into the teaching. At one point it became so dominant that a speaker proclaimed: “We are all Constructivists now!”
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Are we concerned? I am very concerned, on many counts, but fearfully because discussion about methods and philosophies such as constructivism are being suppressed and not provided forums for wider airing. I am concerned because “Shifting of Minds” and changing “worldviews” ARE topics in the inner circles of the education establishments but are not open to the public.
[ to SQE 20160725 11:35 http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/blog/read/time-to-put-a-stake-through-the-heart-of-the-undead-constructivist-learning ]