What Every Principal Needs to Know about Constructivism

1. What Every Principal Needs to Know about Constructivism

2. What is Constructivism? • Constructivism is part of the Cognitive-Developmental Theory of Learning. • Constructivism focuses on the nature of knowledge and learning. Each individual is actively involved in the process of their learning. • Students participate in the construction of their own learning. • Learners need to understand how they process and learn information. • New knowledge must be connected to background knowledge.

3. Background on Cognitive-developmental theory • Remember Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey?

4. Jean Piaget • Cognitive Stages of Development 1. Sensorimotor stage 2. Preoperational stage 3. Concrete operations stage 4. Formal operations stage

5. Lev Vygotsky • His theory involved both cognitive and sociocultural development. • He believed that a child’s cognitive development was determined by their social interactions. • Unlike Piaget, Vygotsky believed that children did not need to be in a certain stage to learn. He believed that children could advance to higher levels of thinking by effective instruction.

6. John Dewey • learn by doing • learning should be organized around the individual not the content • inquiry-based approached to learning • problem-solving skills and informal reasoning • the learner's interest in an issue must be found and learning should be centered around that interest

7. Back to Constructivism Key Points: The learner is involved in generating meaning. Students connect new learning with prior knowledge. Learning is at its best when the learner is aware of how they learn – metacognition. As students learn, they question, interpret, and interact with their background knowledge. “(1) learning is an active process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge, and (2) instruction is a process of supporting that construction rather than communicating knowledge” (Duffy & Cunningham (p.2).

8. Constructivism Allows Teachers to:

9. SO, WHY DO PRINCIPALS NEED TO UNDERSTAND CONTRUCTIVISM? • VISION STATEMENT • MISSION STATEMENT • STAFF DEVELOPMENT • RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION • RELATIONSHIPS • EFFECTIVE TEACHERS • STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT • BRAIN RESEARCH

10. Finally, • Lev Vygotsky believed that students could reach higher levels of cognitive development if they received highly effective instruction. • So, the question becomes, if “students interacting with effective teachers may perform or think “better” than before, what about students interacting with less effective teachers?” (Ornstein & Hunkins, 2009, p. 125).

11. Bottom Line… • It is the principal’s responsibility to ensure the best, most effective teacher is in each classroom.

12. References • Ornstein, A., Hunkins, F., (2009). Curriculum: foundations, principles, and issues. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc. • Duffy, T., Cunningham, D., Constructivism: implications for the design and delivery of instruction. Retrieved from: http://iris.nyit.edu/~kkhoo/Spring2008/Topics/C ons/ConstructivismImplications.pdf. March 3, 2011