Constructivism

• Methods
• Assessment
• Necessities
• Evaluation

Constructivism

The Constructivist Pedagogy or teaching approach is a very interesting one to me. It is based on the idea that people construct knowledge rather than it just being poured into their heads through lectures and readings. This involves lots of activities leaving towards students actively using their minds and interacting with things, making their own interpretations and developing their own understandings. Of course, this requires participation and engagement on the part of the student but, in my opinion, it’s much easier to be engaged when you’re doing something than when you’re sitting still.

Methods

With this pedagogy, the teaching methods involve more so the teacher giving some information in some form, and then giving the students the room to run with it. This can be done through some sort of active experience like interaction, manipulation, experimentation, and activities applying critical thinking and problem-solving skills, all of which are done in an art class so this makes for a great pedagogy for art teachers. And, that makes this approach very student-centered too, since the student has some control over their learning in being more active.

Assessment

Assessment would probably focus on student processes since this may result in a variety of interpretations of the information. So, the teacher may use self-reflections, discussions, visual journals, written responses, open-ended art projects, or similarly interpretation-centered things so the teacher can get an idea of how the students are thinking about the lessons and what meanings they are constructing. Since students are making their own meanings, the only criteria would be that the interpretations make sense given their thought processes and evidence, as opposed to having a single right answer. The students would especially benefit from discussions to hear those multiple meanings and points of view being generated.

Necessities

With this open-ended and active learning, it might make sense to have a flexible or movable classroom layout. This would allow the seating to match the activities like being spread out for individual work but having the option to be pushed together for discussions and group interactions to hear the previously mentioned multiple perspectives. And, due to those multiple perspectives, students should be allowed to communicate with other students and have peer relationships. But, of course the teacher should still make sure that students aren’t working in groups the entire time so they still have time to think about their own ideas on their own. Also having relationships with the rest of the school might be beneficial to create active experiences like leaving the classroom to do research in the library or watch a science experiment in the science class which could then inform student artwork. Being open to trying new resources and technology would also be beneficial to create experiences where students could interact with technology for active learning.

Evaluation

The focus on active learning and experiences and interpretation makes this pedagogy seem overall very valuable to the students. When I was in high school everyone hates the typical lecture-based classroom (and I still do) so this is a much-needed pedagogy.

References

• Hein, G. E. (1998). Educational theory. In Learning in the museum (pp. 34-40). New York: Routledge.