Constructivist Approach to the Light Bulb Lesson

In the video we watched for class, we were able to look at the constructivist approach to learning in action.  The teacher in Washington (dark hair & glasses) used a discovery learning approach when she allowed her students to discover the solution (how to make a light bulb light) rather than just memorize information she gave them.  Another teacher (the one with the short gray hair) used the problem based learning approach when she gave her students the materials (wire, battery, & light bulb) and asked them to write or draw 4 different configurations that made the light bulb light up.  The teacher from Massachusetts changed his style of teaching to cognitive constructivism when he reliquished control of the learning and gave his students the responsibility to discover information on their own.  He commented that the one of the hardest things to change was not automatically answering the student's questions.  Instead, he did provide a guided discovery approach by asking his students thought-provoking questions and hints that led them to discover the answers on their own.  All the teachers in the video encouraged cooperative learning where the students were encouraged to work together in small groups to solve problems.  Even though all the teachers admitted that this style of teaching takes more time, they agreed that the students were able to remember the material much better when they used a constructivist approach to teaching.

As a school media specialist, I will face the challenge of working with a large number of students and teachers from different content areas.  Some of the ways I can try to use constructivist approaches would be to:

1. Introduce teachers to technologies & applications that employ problem-based or discovery approaches to learning like Webquest.
2. Instead of just giving the students the steps to information research, create a problem & have groups of students come up with their own plan.  Discuss which ideas may/or may not work & why.
3. Integrate information literacy within the context of what they are already learning in content areas. 
4. In book club meetings, let the students come up with own discussion questions.

These are just a few ideas, but I can see many opportunites for using this approach in a library setting.