3.4 CONSTRUCTIVISM IN EDUCATION: OPINIONS AND SECOND
According to Brooks (1993) quoted in Phillips (2000), educators want students to take responsibility for their own learning, to be autonomous thinkers, to develop integrated understandings of concepts, and to pose and seek to answer important questions.
Designing the curriculum in such a way that it reflects careful thought about the teacher- student relationship, is relevant to students' interests, addresses real world problems, values students' efforts to come to terms with ideas and arguments of and encourages their full participation.
3.4.3 Constructivism and Education
According to Von Glasersfeld (1992) quoted in Merrill, Hammons, Tolman, Christensen, Vincent and Reynolds (1992), from a constructivist perspective, learning is primarily a process of assimilation and accommodation to disturbances in the subject's experimental environment. The disturbances alert the subject to the need to check cognitive patterns previously established and to recognize those problems that call for new and equilibrating solutions. Comparing, recognizing similarities and differences, and constructing solutions are than amongst the most important cognitive abilities a constructivist teacher would hope to foster. As long as student's solution to a problem achieves a viable goal, it has to be credited. Von Glasersfeld adds that learning how to think and how to do so independently are also goals to be adopted. By his lights students are better motivated when they encounter the satisfaction of thinking out viable solutions for themselves.
They do not need external rewards, as the behaviorists would have it.
A constructivist teacher has two specific tasks: to establish a learning environment suited to providing perturbations for the student's mental constructive process and to project a
model of each individual student's in mental development and constructions, one that will allow the teacher to understand the student's notion of a viable solution (Yon Glasersfeld (1992), quoted in Phillips (2000).
For Von Glasersfeld (1992) quoted in Phillips (2000), external criteria such as test results ought to set demands on student's understanding. Radical constructivists refuse in fact to allow that tests demonstrate student understanding. For them instead of teaching to the test or to shared curriculum goals that is, to the results of construction, Educators ought to pay close attention to the process of individual student learning.Inradical constructivism there is a need for the individual to construct others, for there have to be others to corroborate individual construction. Hence, argues Von Glasersfeld (1992), his view is not solipsistic. Solipsism is the metaphysical view that only one individual mind exists;
there are to be no other minds, no external world. An obvious point is that if one is a solipsist then why worries about educating others, they do not exist.
On the constructivist view, concepts are nothing more than means to organize and classify similar experiences. If a child lacks the concept of rattle, that is, lacks the means to pick out and organize similar experiences and to classify them all as rattle, he needs to abstract that concept from his own experiences, or so the stay goes.
3.4.4 Appraising Constructivism in Science and Mathematics
According to Matthews (1991) quoted in PhiIlips (2000), constructivism is undoubtedly a major theoretical influence in contemporary science and mathematics education; many
education are put forward in a way that simple assume constructivist pedagogical epistemological and anthological positions. For many years constructivism has become part of the educational future. Although constructivism began as a theory of learning, it has progressively expanded its dominion, becoming a theory of teaching, a theory of education, a theory of educational administration, a theory of the origin of ideas, a theory of both personal knowledge and scientific knowledge. Constructivism has become education's version of a grand unified theory.
This approach (Constructivism) holds promise for the pursuit of educational objectives other than those associated exclusively with cognitive development. The constructivist point of view makes it possible to develop a vision of the whole educational phenomena which is comprehensive and penetrating. Constructivism is a postmodern theory of knowledge with the potential to transform educational theory. It is thus not surprising that, for several years now, across country, pre-service and service Educators have been considering constructivism as a referent for their philosophies of education.
Constructivism is not just a theory about learning, teaching and philosophy of education.
It is a theory about one of culture's greatest and most enduring achievements, namely science. Indeed as an epistemology, constructivism speaks to the nature of science. If it does so speak, then it certainly has a claim to our attention (Matthews (1991), quoted in Phillips (2000).
But even the nature of science and the nature of education do not between them exhaust the putative explanatory reach of constructivism which increasingly presents itself as an ethical and political theory, as well as learning, a teaching, and an epistemological theory.
There is also a sense in which constructivism implies caring-caring for ideas, personal theories, self image, human development, professional esteem, it is not take it or leave it epistemology. Constructivism is thought to be a morally superior position to its rivals in learning theory and pedagogy. For some constructivism is even larger than a theory of learning, education and science; it is almost a world view. Pepin quoted in Constructivism in Education, goes on to say that constructivism also offers a global perspective on the meaning of the human adventure, on the way human beings impart meaning to their whole existence in order to survive and adapt.
3.5 MATHEMATICS EDUCATION