Early Childhood Education: Theory of Constructivism - Literature review Example

Theory of constructivism During the entire life, being a part of communicational processes and informational exchange, a person perceives specific knowledge and skills, which help to broaden own outlook and enhance intellectual level. From the very childhood, we are taught how to walk, talk, read and write. We go to schools and colleges, we get our higher education in universities, we take additional extension courses and even being graduators and great professionals in a specific field we still do not give up education because it keeps on accompany us in the places of work, in various situations and in miscellaneous environments. To constantly improve and develop everything that surrounds us is the human nature. Hence, all spheres of human’s life, including social, political and economic processes, face deliberate transformations and changes that are supposed to simplify specific aspects, increase effectiveness or improve final results. Sphere of education has not become an exception. Historically numerous reforms took place in our country, however, only few of them managed to reach successful implementation. Currently, various authors research sphere of education trying to define the most effective approach, elaborate appropriate instruments of its positive influence and depict favorable results and consequents of its practical usage. Educational topics have managed to attain such a big popularity in mass media due to undisputable urgency and importance of education. Today majority of population comprehends the significant role of education in people’s life. Indeed, it is hard to imagine modern technological progress and such an advanced level of social and economic development of our country without powerful influence of effective educational system. Taking into account that educational methods affect the human’s rate of perception and people’s acceptance of information, which in its turn influences on entire human’s performance as a representative of working class, specialists are making attempts to raise population’s awareness about social problems and flaws of current educational approaches. Lately, the biggest attention is drawn to the phenomenon of constructivism, which several decades ago has not been mentioned in any teaching journals. Although nowadays constructivism has managed to obtain great popularity, still there is no mutual opinion regarding the effects of this educational instrument. That is why different authors keep on arguing and proving own views vigorously and persuasively compelling audience to put under doubts modern practical methods. One of the most sensational articles that has become a subject to overall criticism is the work of David Elkind “The problem with constructivism”, which defines correlation between constructivist’s failure and unsuccessful implementation of educational reforms. Due to the fact that the basis of this educational theory is epistemology, therefore constructivism has not received sufficient attention among various political and social events that have been priority for developing society. According to Elkind (2004), the main idea of constructivism is presentation and acceptance of every student not as a merely listener but as an active and dynamic player in studying process and reality that is constructed by every person individually. Author propagandizes constructivism as the most idoneous educational theory, which provides students’ creativity eliminating boring tests and expanding learning abilities. The major reason of why a lot of teachers are skeptical and not supportive about constructivism is a lack of readiness, which, according to Elkind, should be trilateral and include teacher’s, curricula’s and societal preparedness. To implement the strategy of constructivism successfully, it is urgent to start reformation with teacher’s attitude and provide them with relevant researches and date reports. This will raise tutor’s awareness about how exactly the constructivism can be used and what its numerous advantages are. Teachers must be ensured with efficacious training, which will be able to create authentic science of education before it becomes a profession. Elkind agrees with Piaget stating that every learner should obtain specific operations during studying process each task of which must have logical interpretation, relevant time schedule and be constructed in ad rem sequence of topics that more often are presented in traditional way instead of by research. Constructivism by its nature denies standard tests that are considered to be estimating factor of all American schools. However, it has been found that there is no correlation between students’ results on the tests and their genuine level of comprehension. This makes policy of testing almost useless because according to the constructivists students’ knowledge can be seen and appraised only with the help of diversified activities that compel learners to be engaged in the studying process in a fullest way. Consequently, Elkind has studied past experience with different educational changes and has concluded that “successful educational reform must build upon a human philosophy that makes clear its aims and objectives” (Elkind, 2004, p. 311). Author believes that it is imperative to raise people’s awareness about educational transformations and make population ready for changes that will be definitely forced with technologic advance. The distinctive reply on David Elkind’s ideas has become the article of Jamin Carson, who castigates theory of constructivism and supports objectivism as the best educational approach. Carson doubts constructivist’s notions regarding dependent reality and subjectivism of knowledge. Author states that Elkind fails to provide any explanation of possible connection between three types of readiness and effectiveness of constructivism; instead there is only listing of theoretical aspects which do not have practical basis. According to constructivism, each interpretation and consideration of every child, for example, in regard to specific literary work or scientific phenomenon can be accepted as a right one meanwhile objectivism proclaims existence of only one reality. Carson states that Elkind’s thoughts about constructivism partially are contradicting and more common to objectivism than to any other educational theory. According to Carson (2005), “science undermines constructivism rather than serves as a prerequisite to it” (p. 234). Therefore, Elkind’s statement that education firstly should be a science can be considered as quite dubious one. Carson believes that rejection of constructivism happens due to the fact that individuals are prone to have different points of view and perceptions. Teacher’s readiness may lead to counterproductive effect. There is a significant disparity between constructivism and objectivism. Hence, the second theory supposes that the tutors share generally accepted facts for giving students opportunity to update received information under influence of own experience and beliefs, meanwhile the first theory accepts every opinion as correct and tantamount to the views of grown-up people. Trying both educational theories in practice, Carson claims that constructivism did not give desirable results because the children were confused when they received one of the tasks appropriate to the mentioned approach. Consequently, Carson has concluded that without a traditional differentiation between right and wrong student’s answers, teachers foster the lack of criticism and total absence of thorough reflections on the genuine reality. In contrast to Carson’s opinion, Martin Brooks in the article “The courage to be constructivist” supports Elkind and badly criticizes test-taking strategies. Brooks has managed to make a sufficient number of researches for being able to conclude that there is a prominent tendency of increase of tests’ popularity which later on will also proceed with its expansion. The problem is that government finds test-taking strategy rather convenient for getting rid of unsuccessful students and closing educational establishments with so-called poor performance. Meanwhile, Brooks also confirms that test results are not able to judge student’s knowledge adequately. Hence, more often than not, children become too much concerned about the tests that they stop care about their actual intellectual level and abilities to perceive information, instead of this, learners focus their strengths on finding a way to pass tests positively even if to achieve this they are forced to cheat. Such situation contradicts the main principles of education. Brooks states that the policy of tests propagandizes passivity and routine. Such approach does not give children enough opportunity to express themselves. Standard tests limit students’ abilities and intentions to use creativity while constructivist teachers aim at elimination of passive test-taking method and liberalization of students’ activities. In this respect, constructivists excogitate instruments for stimulating a conversation within a group so that students are encouraged to share their ideas which are accepted as evaluating factor by the tutors and coordinated with relevant curriculum. In his article, Brooks provides different examples about how constructivism has been successfully implemented in practice. Also the author views major reasons of why modern education is not so much effective as it should be. Brooks states (1999), “as educators we have great control over what we teach, but far less control over what students learn” (p. 20). In this respect, the author summons every teacher to restructure own lectures and support more creative educational approach, which helps to take into account that wrong answers of the students are not merely a reason for punishments but a powerful educational instrument that can lead to deeper knowledge. Summarizing abovementioned articles, I can conclude that constructivism indeed can be considered as the most appropriate and effective educational theory with numerous positive practical experiences. Constructivism ensures specific liberty for students, offers variety of interesting and challenging tasks, encourages dialogue between students and the lecturer with aim to find out learners’ views, provides students with a chance to modify existed notions and ideas or create a totally new one, values student’s initiative, displays respect for learner’s efforts, directs students to a correct thinking and facilitates the strengthen of knowledge and skills (Richardson, 2003). However, I can not go along with an idea that there is no right or wrong answers. For example, if after reading a short story “The gift of the Magi” by O’Henry someone says that the main topic depicted by author in this literary work is a problem of mammonism or betrayal, being a teacher, I would never accept such an answer as a correct one. Therefore, there always should be correspondence and relevance between thinking process and curricula. According to Matthews (2003), “a key notion in constructivist teaching is the importance of matching teaching style to student learning style” (p. 58). Taking this into careful consideration, nowadays a lot of enthusiastic teachers choose the theory of constructivism. Providing learners with a chance to develop own skills and fill up knowledge base, tutors propose different activities, such as making reports and presentations, conducting interviews and disputes, preparing speeches and experiments. Receiving extraordinary assignments, students are able to express themselves, strengthen obtained knowledge or find out where exactly their thinking has a flaw. In an era of high-stakes testing and accountability, many teachers are managed to maintain their beliefs regarding constructivism. They craftily and professionally combine routine tests with ingenious tasks which ensure a great assistance for students to properly comprehend the material and later on pass mandatory tests successfully. Such approach forces students not only to simply memorize presented information but also to reflect, argue, negotiate, prove or refute studied topics. Consequently, it can be concluded that eventually constructivism leads to deeper analyses and understanding among students. This theory can evaluate audience’s knowledge more adequately than ordinary tests which are often characterized with such notions as intuition, chance and luck. Therefore, the formula of effective educational reform is quite obvious: the more constructivist teachers we have, the more intellectual our society will be. References Brooks, M. G. (1999). The courage to be constructivist. The Constructivist Classroom, 57(3), 18-24. Carson, J. (2005). Objectivism and education: A response to David Elkind’s ‘The problem with constructivism’. The Educational Forum, 69, 232-238. Elkind, D. (2004). The problem with constructivism. The Educational Forum, 68(4), 306-312. Matthews, W. J. (2003). Constructivism in the classroom: Epistemology, history and empirical evidence. Teacher Education Quarterly, 30(3), 51-64. Richardson, V. (2003). Constructivist pedagogy. Teachers College Record, 105(9), 1623-1640. Read More