Socio-cognitive & Constructive Learning

To me, constructivist teaching is a method where the teacher simply guides his or her students into finding the answers to a problem on their own. There are many different ways of achieving this, some of which were illustrated in the video, Can We Believe Our Eyes?

In the first scenario with the student, Jennifer, the teacher gave his students light bulbs so that they could follow along with his description of how electricity flows through it to make a circuit (1). He then had the students try to light one bulb on their own, and then three bulbs on the same circuit (2). A month later, Jennifer was asked to perform the same task, but she was unable to do so because she did not retain the information. After reviewing the materials and observing the circuit, she was then able to reteach herself how to recreate the activity (3). Jennifer also shared with the interviewer some ideas that she had that might help her teacher teach this lesson better.

The next example that used a light bulb was taught by a teacher who simply guided her students into finding the answers to their own questions by having them experiment with the problem until they were able to figure out how to light the bulbs the right way (4). One way the teacher did this was by having the students feel the heat on the batteries and write down why that happened (5). By the students actually learning this firsthand, they will likely retain the information longer that if they had just been told or shown.

The video about Albert Bandura showed me that people (especially children) imitate what they see other people doing. The video, Children See, Children Do, illustrates that the things we demonstrate to children are not always nice and there is no way to protect them from negativity unless we are proactive in not acting in a negative manner. Therefore, above all else, even above the lessons I teach, I am going to have to be diligent about the way I portray my negative emotions when I am around my students. If I get irritated with a student, I will need to learn to deal with that in a positive way. I also am going to need to be understanding with my students because I'm sure that some of them will come from negative households and they will bring that negativity into the classroom.