The Reading and Constructivist Learning Parallel

The Constructivist Celebration | 2¢ Worth

I need to know what you mean by constructivism and why you think it’s the “best single concept”.

Constructivism is like reading, it’s all about the connections.  When you read, you make connections with your background knowledge, whether a
Text-to-Self Connection, Text-to-Text Connection, or Text-to-World Connection.  The Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmerman tell us that you cannot comprehend what you read unless you have schema to which to connect the new information.  Otherwise it slides off like rain hitting a tin roof.  It bounces off and slides down into the gutter where it is lost.
If it makes a connection, the new information either agrees with or challenges the reader’s schema.  If it agrees with his or her background, then it is incorporated into the old schema to form a new and improved schema.
If the new information challenges the old schema, it is for two reasons: either the information is wrong or the schema was built upon a misconception.  Confirming the new information with other sources (a 21st century skill) will solve the former conflict.
The later conflict, a misconception, is tricker.  Confronting misconceptions can best be addressed through Inquiry.  The student investigates the conflict of facts and discovers that his or her particular view of the world was mistaken.
The student must then make a choice.  He or she either tenaciously hangs onto the misconception, usually out of fear or prejudice, and rejects the new facts.   Or, in an “ah-ha” moment of realization, the student learns something new. The student  reorients his or her world view to incorporate the new realization, forming a new schema.  These are the moments I live for in teaching.  The sudden light of understanding in a child’s eyes that had moments before been a look of realization make all the other struggles of teaching worth it.
Misconceptions in schema must be identified, confronted in a nonjudgmental way, and incorporated with an open mind into new schema.
What if there is no background knowledge to connect?  The teacher must plan guided experiences on which students investigate, create, and evaluate.
Did you notice that we stopped talking some time back about reading and have been talking instead about learning?  Reading and learning go hand-in-hand.  Reading is a very complex process and learning is no different.  Both rely upon connections to background knowledge.
Experiences build schema, not textbooks and worksheets.  Converstations and  collaboration build connections, not lectures.  Observations rebuild misconceptions, not standardized testing.  Teachers build learning, not No Child Left Behind.
In constructivism, it’s all about the student connections.  Read, construct, connect.  That is what learning is all about.

David Warlick said in The Constructivist Celebration | 2¢ Worth

Perhaps the best single concept that describes where we should be focusing our efforts, as educators, is constructivist learning.

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