Constructivist Pedagogy

Abstract:
This paper is a seminar paper that aims to analyse the “Constructivist Pedagogy” article written
by Virginia Richardson in 2003. This paper would illustrate the article's main points with
address the four main issues related to applying constructivist pedagogy in education. Besides,
this paper would briefly discuss similar literature and add my personal experience to the topic.
Finally, it would conclude the topic and suggest my opinion of constructivist pedagogy issues.

1. Introduction:
Since the constructivist pedagogy had been discovered at the latest of the 20th century, a vast
development and understanding of learning and teaching is begun and became a philosophy to
teach students of different ages. Many researchers looked into how constructivist pedagogy
affect learning and teaching (Howard & Brady 2015; Keengwe & Onchwari 2011; Keengwe,
Onchwari & Agamba 2014). According to Keengwe and Onchwari (2011), constructivist
pedagogy is basically based on constructivism, an educational theory based on hands-on
activities to develop students’ thoughts.

Virginia Richardson wrote the “Constructivist Pedagogy” article in 2003. It illustrated a holistic
view of constructivist pedagogy that covers the history, issues, and relationship to
constructivist learning theory. This article mainly aims to critiques from the inside of
constructivist pedagogy. The author address four main issues, which are (1) research of
students learning in the constructivist classroom, (2) recommend a theory of development that
describes the effectiveness of the constructivist teaching, (3) knowledge that required form
teacher who applied the constructivist pedagogy, and (4) address possible problems with using
constructivist pedagogy. This seminar report aims to illustrate the view of the article and
discuss it by linking it to my experience.

I chose constructivist pedagogy as a topic for the seminar paper because of different reasons.
Firstly, this topic was an essential topic for teaching and learning philosophy since I was a
student in the education program. Similarly, this pedagogy was introduced to many students
joining education as a career in many different universities around the world. Secondly, this
pedagogy has different angles that need to be discovered, which are illustrated in the article.
Finally, I am very curious about how the author presents the constructivist pedagogy issues
that usually were not mentioned in many studies.

2. Identify and Explain the Main Concepts of the Article

(Richardson 2003):
Richardson (2003) started the article by giving a background of the constructivist pedagogy.
He explained that constructivist pedagogy is divided into two main angles or approaches:
Social Constructivism and Psychological Constructivism. Social Constructivism shows how
the power, economy, political, and social factors impact how people form understanding and
knowledge. In contrast, and Psychological Constructivism explains how learners actively
construct understanding depend on the learner’s background knowledge. This development
occurs in a social group that gives a chance to share and provide a warrant for these
understandings. The author illustrated the difference and similarities between the two
approaches. Social Constructivism focused on how formal knowledge is created or determined
within power, economic, social, and political. Moreover, the critical theory issues of status,
ideology, politics, and power are considered in Social Constructivism. However, Psychological
Constructivism focused on how knowledge is created within the individual mind, significantly
how it improved within a social group. Richardson (2003) notice that both approaches believed
that knowledge is actively constructed in the human mind. He highlighted that most of the work
on constructivist pedagogy follows the Psychological Constructivism approach.

2.1 Current Interest on Constructivist Pedagogy:

Many programs worldwide adapted constructivist principles as basic standards for learning and
teaching and applied in different subjects internationally. In addition, some programs follow
materials that are suggested to use to teach these standards. Interestingly, many researchers are
focusing on preparing teachers to teach by using the method of teaching constructivism to guide
them to create constructivist classrooms. Richardson (2003) conclude five main characteristics
involve in the constructivist pedagogy process as following:

1. Attention to individual and respect students’ backgrounds and understanding (this can
be explained as student-centered).

2. Facilitation of group dialogue counts as a critical element to lead the creation and shared
understanding of a topic.

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 3. Planned or unplanned formal domain knowledge into the conversation through direct
instruction, a reference to the text, exploring a website, or any other means which
created for this purpose.

4. Give students a chance to determine, challenge, change, or add to existing beliefs and
understandings through participating in tasks.

5. Improving students’ metawareness of their understandings and learning processes.

These characteristics highlighted two aspects of constructivist teacher education; (1) creating
a class environment, activities, and methods of learning; and (2) used as a constructivist
approach in teacher education instructions. However, it can be applied differently depending
on the content domain, age level of the students, students’ experience, school context, and
teaching style. According to the author, many researchers focus on preparing teachers to teach
constructively since constructive learning theory becomes a significant part of the curriculum.

2.2 Unsolved Issues:

Since the constructivist pedagogy is part of teaching and learning, the author mentioned that
we should consider the issues that may happen:

2.2.1 Students learning:

Constructivist pedagogy could be as different activities encountered in teaching methods such
as direct instruction like lectures, non-interactive like TV. Different studies explore the students
learning by using a constructivist classroom. A constructivist classroom may develop students’
deep understandings and build their complex levels. However, constructivist pedagogy focuses
on a specific domain or discipline with the aim to improve students’ abilities in specific subject
matter such as math, history, music…etc. The issue is there is a need to conduct more empirical
inquiries in a constructivist classroom. At the end of this part, the author is hoping that
constructivist instruction would yield decent scores on measures of the state-level standardized
tests.

2.2.2 Effective Constructivist Teaching:

Good teaching would be always involved or included constructivist teaching. However,
Richardson (2003) highlighted that constructivism is the theory of learning and theory of not
teaching, so the element of effective constructivist teaching is unknown. Therefore, there is
lacking a sense of effective constructivist teaching. Without a clear sense of constructivism
teaching, many interesting things happening in the classroom under the label of constructivism.

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At this point, we may find different views of constructivism teaching, and some teachers may
develop transmission beliefs of constructivist teaching. Furthermore, some teaching theories
are being created under the subject-matter area, which provides teachers with more or less
effective approaches to constructivist teaching.

2.2.3 Teachers’ Subject-Matter Knowledge:

The research highlighted the importance of deep and strong subject-matter in a constructivist
classroom. For example, teachers need the knowledge to evaluate students' understanding,
creating activities, and guide students. Therefore, each subject-matter carried different research
within individual subject-matter, which lead to little no acknowledgment of what other subject-
matter taught. Therefore, the author said teachers require knowledge of the structure of
discipline as well as its epistemological framework. Especially, constructivist teaching needs a
deep understanding of disciplines. However, it is not clear what is the expected level of
knowledge in the discipline to teach in a constructivist classroom. To solve this problem, the
author suggested that each context or subject-matter should consider what transfer of
understanding, the habit of mind, and skills in the context.

2.2.4 Cultural Differences:

In this section, the author discussed the constructivist pedagogy within a social constructivist
frame. It is looked at as a concept that practices culture, political, and economic constraints.
Richardson (2003) stated that constructivist pedagogy would be applied differently among
different cities because of different teachers’ education, requirements, and cultural beliefs
about the nature of teaching and learning. The community has a unique vision when it comes
to constructivist pedagogy. It usually, the one asks students and teachers to follow a set of do’s
and don’ts. Additionally, it helps teachers and students create a dialogical social group to
develop students’ understanding of materials and knowledge. However, it focuses on creating
students who serve the community, not create constructivist pedagogy. On the other hand,
teachers believe each student is unique, and students should develop a unique set of
understandings. The author observed different schools in different cities, and he notices that
they are not following constructivist pedagogy while the community believes that they do. To
solve this, he stated that the only way to identify the constructivist pedagogy is to follow the
five characterises mentioned above in the section “Current Interest on Constructivist
Pedagogy.” However, Richardson (2003) said that the most serious problem with using
constructivist pedagogy is when it values everyone's best practice.

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 3. Discussion:
In this section, I am going to look at the article and different literature by explaining my
experience.

3.1 Strengths and Weaknesses:

Looking in the article, I found some strengths and weaknesses points. For the strengths, the
author covered the constructivist pedagogy issues with enough details. He used notes to explain
some certain concepts that mention in the chapter. Additionally, he gave examples and illustrate
their relation to the topic. He also gave a good recommendation and suggestion to solve the
issues.

However, some weaknesses need to be addressed. There is a need to explain how constructivist
pedagogy is applied in the assessments and how teachers and schools applied it. The author
focused on pedagogical constructivist only and ignored social constructivism. I think it would
be better if the author added figures or charts to illustrate the article's ideas. Finally, I notice
each heading had different ideas that need to discuss each idea individually.

3.2 Different Studies of Constructivist Pedagogy:

There are different researches look at the constructivist pedagogy in education. In light of
community issues, Tan (2017) tried to applied constructivist pedagogy in China education
system. He found that issues in applying this approach in China because it needs to consider
“cultural appropriateness of constructivism and other ‘student-centered’ and self-directed
approaches across socio-cultural contexts” (p. 8). However, Bada and Olusegun (2015)
highlighted the importance of constructivist pedagogy, especially in education. He listed the
different characteristics and goals of constructivist pedagogy. Interestingly, he mentioned some
ways to apply it on assessment such as observation, students’ work, opinions, test. Therefore,
in constructivist pedagogy process is as important as the product. As innovation incentives,
Ferguson and Sharples (2014) use social constructivist pedagogy to create a platform for
students where they can engage together. As a result, they found this turn into success.
However, Ferguson and Sharples (2014) found challenges in applying this massive pedagogy.
In this view, many different researchers addressed some suggestions for integrating
constructivist pedagogy with technology, which has many good benefits (Keengwe &
Onchwari 2011; Keengwe, Onchwari & Agamba 2014).

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 3.3 My Experience:
I am a lecturer at a higher education institution who teaches in the education department to
graduate students to be early childhood future teachers. So, constructivist pedagogy is part of
the program; I introduce it to my students as a learning theory. However, I notice that my
students applied the constructivist pedagogy differently, especially when they go to teaching
practice. I found the reason behind this may be related to their mentor school teacher, who
sometimes comes from different cultures or backgrounds. Therefore, when I read this article, I
found the five main characteristics of the constructivist pedagogy process mentioned in the
article are beneficial. It counts as an essential point to introduce when I teach my students to
apply constructivist pedagogy as a teaching method. Moreover, this would help them to apply
constructivist pedagogy in their teaching practice experience. Finally, I would avoid making
my students confused about how a constructivist classroom could look like or how they make
sure that they applied the constructivist pedagogy.

4. Conclusion:
In conclusion, this seminar paper aims to give an overview of constructivist pedagogy in
education and highlighted different issues that would appear in this pedagogy. Richardson
(2003) highlighted the importance of constructivist pedagogy and addressed four main issues
that would face educators in this pedagogy. He suggested some solutions by mentioning the
five main characteristics involved in the constructivist pedagogy process. I believe that
constructivist pedagogy could be an excellent pedagogy to applied to the curriculum. However,
we need to create a clear path of how teachers could apply worldwide to avoid issues.
Therefore, I highly recommend having a common international program for teachers to address
how they could apply constructivist teaching and learning.

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 5. References:

Bada, S.O. and Olusegun, S. (2015). Constructivism learning theory: A paradigm for teaching
and learning. Journal of Research & Method in Education, vol. 5 (6), pp.66-70.

Ferguson, R. and Sharples, M. (2014), September. Innovative pedagogy at massive scale:

teaching and learning in MOOCs. In European Conference on Technology Enhanced
Learning (pp. 98-111). Springer, Cham.

Howard, C. and Brady, M. (2015). Teaching social research methods after the critical turn:
challenges and benefits of a constructivist pedagogy. International Journal of Social Research
Methodology, vol. 18 (5), pp.511-525.

Keengwe, J. and Onchwari, G. (2011). Fostering meaningful student learning through

constructivist pedagogy and technology integration. International Journal of Information and
Communication Technology Education, vol. 7 (4), pp.1-10.

Keengwe, J., Onchwari, G. and Agamba, J. (2014). Promoting effective e-learning practices
through the constructivist pedagogy. Education and Information Technologies, vol,19 (4),
pp.887-898.

Richardson, V. (2003). Constructivist pedagogy. Teachers college record, vol. 105 (9),
pp.1623-1640.

Tan, C. (2017). Constructivism and pedagogical reform in China: Issues and

challenges. Globalisation, Societies and Education, vol. 15 (2), pp.238-247.