Dr. Anju Khanna has 23 years of experience in the field of education. Her moorings are seeped in Shri Aurobindo and the Mother’s philosophy of education as empowerment for the psychic, vital and mental growth of the child and therein of a community.
At present Dr. Khanna is:
At present Dr. Khanna is:
- R&D Head of a group of Nursery Schools, called The Circle, Which are sought after for their content, philosophy and staff training.
- She is also an author of textbooks and value based stories for children.
- She is on the panel of NCERT authors for Primary education.
- She is a sought after resource person , for master trainers -primary text books in English at NCERT
- She has extensively worked on additions/deletions on Montessori, Thematic and Experiential form of learning both in terms of content, methodology and tool making.
- She conducts training programs and provides consultancy services to the Primary Wing of Senior Schools of Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Chennai, Vadodra & Patna for curriculum and empowerment of staff related to the ‘inside-outside’ phenomena of education in terms of milestone variations.
- The Circle under her, both at Delhi and Gurgaon, is emerging as an integrated set-up for children with learning difficulties and spectrum disorders.
- She is currently on a quest for undertaking research in E.C.C.E practices in the country and the social /psychological impact on young children.
- She is also attached as an active member with forums related to the discovery of the self (Astha Foundation) both as a learner and a facilitator.
Her academic background fuels her desire for continuous research into the academic, emotional and psychic needs of children
1978-1994
Her many qualifications include
- A ‘Gold Medal’ for being the ‘best all-rounder student’ of her University.
- Post Graduation in English Literature (organized debates, writing workshops, seminars, symposiums, guest speaker lectures, audio-video society, college magazine). She topped the university at the Post Graduate level
- Appointed as a lecturer in the Post Graduate College.
- She did her M. Phil.
- She did her Ph.D. in English Literature with special emphasis on relationships along with
- A stint at State College Pennsylvania USA as a teacher on an exchange program.
It was during this period that she interacted with a large number of pre - nursery schools, not only imbibing their methodology but also contributing to their syllabus by providing inputs on Parental Time Management techniques with young children.
- On returning to India, Dr. Khanna gave up her Readers position at the University to start a small playgroup from her residence. (The culmination of a dream she had since her own school days.)
3 comments:
CLARION CALL!!
E.C.C.E CONCERNS
(Synopsis of a paper)
Raised in a national seminar at NCERT
By: Dr Anju khanna.
Are we ready for a change that sees early child years as a time not for education but one of care that facilitates education for a better tomorrow?
What childhood, in its initial phases of life, needs is a nurturance for emotional growth and habits of life patterns for sleep time, mealtime, and other biological needs. And not an early exposure to the factory produced sameness that our Macaulay driven education system has given to us.
The clarion call as I feel is an opportunity for like-minded travelers on the path of early childcare and education to come and join hands and therein create a larger community that works in sync with research based data, policy-makers, and local operators to sit together for:
• Formulating standards to facilitate E.C.C.E. as a critical phase of human development.
• Facilitating a partnership between all stake holders around the child to come on a common forum –the gap between the government and the private sector to be bridged. In other words, the commercialization of childhood by a significant few to end.
• Thrashing out common feelings for childcare norms and sharing common goals and vision for contextually relevant needs of children.
Creating curriculum around the experience of the child
• Laying stress on shifts in teacher training programmes, from skill based to one of nurturing emotional intelligence in the adult.
• Facilitate- Self growth in the environment, around the child.
From teaching to facilitation a shift that is possible by involving the child as the main constructor of her/his knowledge.
Dr Anju khanna
Head
R&D
The circle
A space for primary educators
A sharing session held:
On: 17 June 08 at N.C.E.R.T
Venue: DELHI
For: PRIMARY TEACHER TRAINING WORKSHOP
“In my experience... achievement depends on willingness to accept a challenge, take risks, and make errors and the belief that one has the control over the outcomes. Achievement is hindered by perfectionism, fear of failure, and the belief that control, credit and/or blame belong to someone else. “
P. Theroux Jan 1994
Brain Research:
• "Three principles from brain research: emotional safety, appropriate challenges, and self constructed meaning suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach to classroom instruction teaching is ineffective for most students and harmful to some."
”No two children are alike. An enriched environment for one is not necessarily enriched for another. "
• No two children learn in the identical way.
• In the classroom we should teach children to think for themselves.
• One way is to group children so they are talking to each other, they are asking questions of each other, they are learning to be teachers.
"So our environment, including the classroom environment, is not a neutral place. We educators are either growing dendrites or letting them wither and die. The trick is to determine what constitutes an enriched environment.
A few facts about the brain's natural proclivities will assist us in making these determinations, determinations that reveal how children construct their own knowledge:
1. The brain has not evolved to its present condition by taking in meaningless data; an enriched environment gives students an opportunity to make sense out of what they are learning, what some call the opportunity to "make meaning"
2. The Brain develops in an integrated fashion over time. Babies do not talk one week, tie their shoes the next, and then work on their emotional development. An enriched environment addresses multiple aspects of development simultaneously.
3. The brain is essentially curious and it must be to survive. It constantly seeks connections between the new and the known. Learning is a process of active Construction by the learner and enrichment gives students the opportunity to relate what they are learning to what they already know.
That children construct their own learning owes a theoretical kinship with:
Vygotsky who said:
• “Social interaction is an important tool; in development of cognition
• social learning precedes development,
• social interaction leads to increased knowledge ,
Jean Piaget said:
• “Knowledge is actively constructed at a certain stage of development all children will become aware of “self”.
A mother places a mark on a child’s face without the child’s knowledge. She then places the child in front of a mirror. If the child has self awareness, he will reach to his face and touch the mark. However, if he has not developed self awareness, he will reach out to the mirror and try to touch the mark. He is unaware that it is his image in the mirror
• Students need to develop the "mind-tools" that will enable them to become active participants in the learning process.
• This means students are given choices, allowed to make decisions and required to construct meaning from the facts by developing presentations, products or solutions, in order to apply their understanding of the situation to the task of solving problems.
• Students need to learn how to question, plan, organize, interpret, develop insight, analyze, synthesize and self-evaluate.
• The consequence of this approach is seeing students more fully engaged in the learning process, and this empowers students.
• "Engaged Learning" is active involvement. This is highly relevant learning and the skills are transferable to the process of real life problem solving. In employing these strategies we are equipping our students with life-long learning skills.
• "Mind tools" are the skills, strategies and the (hardware) tools that enable a learner to become an engaged, responsible and productive learner.
Case study at a leading public school:
Madhu mittal is a school English teacher who has struggled for years when it came to teaching poems and stories as text in English to her students. In the past, students became bored immediately with reading or reciting any of the poems /text aloud in class and consistently complained that the language was not too difficult to understand nor did she feel that the children understood any fine aspect of the text, in-fact they were not enjoying the class.
Desperate for any degree of engagement, Madhu decided to take a social constructivist approach to poetry and story narration in class v with her students.
Instead of reading the text aloud in class, allowing the students to remain passive and uninvolved with the text, Madhu divided the class into five cooperative groups and assigned the groups to choose reading ,drawing ,rendering with craft ,arranging the new sounds . She then explained that each group was to turn their assigned act into a modern-day puppet show. The groups were to read, interpret, and translate their understanding of the poem into a language of their understanding (they were even encouraged to use common slang when appropriate.)
They were also required to create puppets to represent the characters and ultimately perform their act for the rest of the class. Each group worked together with Madhu‘s guidance to create a shared understanding of their assigned act and use that shared understanding as a basis for their construction of the modern-day puppet show. In the end, they produced a product that was created through a social learning process.
The class was divided into groups of 10, because each group was comprised of various learners with diverse interests and backgrounds, each member had something unique to offer in their group’s construction of the puppet show.
One particular group was assigned stanza one .They included Henu,, who moved from Gujarat and did not still have friends, Nitin who loved music specially the hip hop kind music Nina, who loved to write, Ramesh who enjoyed comic books and liked to draw, Prem was the quiet one, Meera, Ishita, Vivek -were excited about different aspects of the project but would have been very uncomfortable trying to understand their assigned act of the text and turn it in to a modern puppet show on their own.
At the first meeting, the group decided it was best to start by reading and discussing stanza one together; Nina offered her writing skills to the task of making notes about the progression of the plot and the characters’ actions as the group interacted and constructed meaning out of what they read. Once they felt as though they had a firm understanding of the poem they shared their findings and notes with Madhu Mittal who, in turn, provided feedback.
At the next meeting, they moved on to the more creative aspects of the project, where everyone was able to contribute their own personal skills and talents. The group decided to present their act in the local gujrati dialect.
Growing up in Gujarat Henu was very familiar with the gujrati dialect and culture, so she and Nina joined forces in writing a script for the puppet show. For background music, they decided hip-hop would fit well with the gujrati influence; Vivek agreed to work on finding hip-hop selections that would work well with the story. Jeevan gladly volunteered to take on the creation of the puppets. He wanted to use what he had learned about the characters through the group’s previous interactions and create modern interpretations with a comic book influence.
By the time the product was constructed, each group member’s mark was on the final outcome, so each had a sense of ownership. The inter subjectivity the students experienced through this group project allowed them to extend their understanding of the authors story.
In addition to completing the part each agreed to do, the students had to communicate, share and negotiate to create the final product. The students brought their diverse interests and collaborated to create their finished product. Madhu’s use of the social constructivist approach to this lesson proved successful as the students came to a clear and engaged understanding of the text her ultimate goal.
What is Social Constructivism and what did Madhu do?
What Madhu did was simple she shifted the onus of being the only one with the knowledge to activating the personal motivation of her class by actually involving them with initially what they were good at and then letting them actually learn from collaborating with each other
Constructivism is a much needed shift that teachers like Madhu have experimented with and brought to the class room it emphasizes the importance of culture and context in understanding to the main text -what occurs in society and constructing knowledge based on this understanding. This perspective is closely associated with many contemporary theories, most notably the developmental theories of Vygotsky and Bruner, and Bandura's social cognitive theory
Assumptions of Social Constructivism
Social constructivism is based on specific assumptions about reality, knowledge, and learning. To understand and apply models of instruction that are rooted in the perspectives of social constructivists, it is important to know the premises that underlie them.
Reality: Social constructivists believe that reality is constructed through human activity. Members of a society together invent the properties of the world . For the social constructivist, reality cannot be discovered: it does not exist prior to its social invention.
Knowledge: To social constructivists, knowledge is also a human product, and is socially and culturally constructed. Individuals create meaning through their interactions with each other and with the environment they live in.
Learning: Social constructivists view learning as a social process. It does not take place only within an individual, nor is it a passive development of behaviors that are shaped by external forces. Meaningful learning occurs when individuals are engaged in social activities.
Inter subjectivity of Social Meanings
Inter -subjectivity is a shared understanding among individuals whose interaction is based on common interests and assumptions that form the ground for their communication. Communications and interactions entail socially agreed-upon ideas of the world and the social patterns and rules of language use).Construction of social meanings, therefore, involves inter-subjectivity among individuals. Social meanings and knowledge are shaped and evolve through negotiation within the communicating groups. Any personal meanings shaped through these experiences are affected by the inter subjectivity of the community to which the people belong.
Inter -subjectivity not only provides the grounds for communication but also supports people to extend their understanding of new information and activities among the group members.
Knowledge is derived from interactions between people and their environments and resides within cultures. The construction of knowledge is also influenced by the inter subjectivity formed by cultural and historical factors of the community. When the members of the community are aware of their inter subjective meanings, it is easier for them to understand new information and activities that arise in the community’s Social Context and becomes the basis for Learning
Some social constructivists discuss two aspects of social context that largely affect the nature and extent of the learning:
Historical developments inherited by the learner as a member of a particular culture. Symbol systems, such as language, logic, and mathematical systems, are learned throughout the learner's life. These symbol systems dictate how and what is learned.
The nature of the learner's social interaction with knowledgeable members of the society is important. Without the social interaction with more knowledgeable others, it is impossible to acquire social meaning of important symbol systems and learn how to use them. Young children develop their thinking abilities by interacting with adults.
General Perspectives of Social Constructivism on Learning
Social constructivists see as crucial both the context in which learning occurs and the social contexts that learners bring to their learning environment. There are four general perspectives that inform how we could facilitate the learning within a framework of social constructivism
Cognitive tools perspective: Cognitive tools perspective focuses on the learning of cognitive skills and strategies. Students engage in those social learning activities that involve hands-on project-based methods and utilization of discipline-based cognitive tools .Together they produce a product and, as a group, impose meaning on it through the social learning process.
Idea-based social constructivism: Idea-based social constructivism sets education's priority on important concepts in the various disciplines (e.g. part-whole relations in mathematics, photosynthesis in science, and point of view in literature, These "big ideas" expand learner vision and become important foundations for learners' thinking and on construction of social meaning
Pragmatic or emergent approach: Social constructivists with this perspective assert that the implementation of social constructivism in class should be emergent as the need arises Its proponents hold that knowledge, meaning, and understanding of the world can be addressed in the classroom from both the view of individual learner and the collective view of the entire class
Transactional or situated cognitive perspectives: This perspective focuses on the relationship between the people and their environment. Humans are a part of the constructed environment (including social relationships); the environment is in turn one of the characteristics that constitutes the individual When a mind operates, its owner is interacting with the environment. Therefore, if the environment and social relationships among group members change, the tasks of each individual also change. Learning thus should not take place in isolation from the environment.
Social Constructivism and Instructional Models
Instructional models based on the social constructivist perspective stress the need for collaboration among learners and with practitioners in the society assert that a society’s practical knowledge is situated in relations among practitioners, their practice, and the social organization and political economy of communities of practice. For this reason, learning should involve such knowledge and practice . Social constructivist approaches can include reciprocal teaching, peer collaboration, cognitive apprenticeships, problem-based instruction, and other methods that involve learning with others
The Guiding Principles of Constructivism
• Posing problems of emerging relevance to students
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• structuring learning around primary concepts - the quest for essence
• Seeking and valuing students' points of view
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• Adapting curriculum to address students' suppositions
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• assessing student learning in the context of teaching
• The teacher's role has changed in recent years. There has been a shift of emphasis from instructional techniques to developing learning techniques. Our role is no longer that of the "sage on the stage". Today our role leans more towards facilitator or "guide on the side".
• Our role is to increase student motivation and develop the skills or strategies that make a student more competent and to structure the learning environment so that students are able to take ownership of their own learning. Fortunately, many of the strategies that "empower" and "engage" students also lead to increased motivation. The focus here is on the strategies that teachers may use to develop and maintain motivation in school age students.
• Motivation and achievement have long been recognized to have a close cause-effect relationship, as of course have ability and achievement. The anticipated relationship is: the higher the ability, the higher the expected achievement levels. However logical this premise might appear to be, it does not always prove to be the case.
• It is therefore understandable that research into the connection between motivation, ability and achievement has focused on the underachieving gifted student because they are the examples that are most difficult to explain.
• Hailed as an exemplary model of early childhood education, the theory of constructivism in education is committed to the creation of conditions for learning that will enhance and facilitate children's construction of "his or her own powers of thinking through the synthesis of all the expressive, communicative and cognitive languages" -Edwards and Forman,.
• The constructivism approach can be viewed as a resource and inspiration to help educators, parents, and children as they work together to further develop their own educational programs. It’s based on the following principles
1. Emergent Curriculum: An emergent curriculum is one that builds upon the interests of children. Topics for study are captured from the talk of children, through community or family events, as well as the known interests of children (puddles, shadow, dinosaurs, etc.). Team planning is an essential component of the emergent curriculum. Teachers work together to formulate hypotheses about the possible directions of a project, the materials needed, and possible parent and/or community support and involvement.
2. Project Work: Projects, also emergent, are in-depth studies of concepts, ideas, and interests, which arise within the group. Considered as an adventure, projects may last one week or could continue throughout the school year. Throughout a project, teachers help children make decisions about the direction of study, the ways in which the group will research the topic, the representational medium that will demonstrate and showcase the topic and the selection of materials needed to represent the work. Long-term projects enhance lifelong learning.
3. Representational Development: Consistent with Howard Gardner's notion of schooling for multiple intelligences, the approach calls for the integration of the graphic arts as tools for cognitive, linguistic, and social development. Presentation of concepts and hypotheses in multiple forms of representation -- print, art, construction, drama, music, puppetry, and shadow play are viewed as essential to children's understanding of experience. Children have 100 languages, multiple symbolic language
4. Collaboration: Collaborative group work, both large and small, is considered valuable and necessary to advance cognitive development. Children are encouraged to dialogue, critique, compare, negotiate, hypothesize, and problem solve through group work. Within this approach multiple perspectives promote both a sense of group membership and the uniqueness of self. There high emphasis on the collaboration among home-school-community to support the learning of the child.
5. Teachers as Researchers: The teacher's role within this approach is complex. Working as co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and guide as she/he lends expertise to children -Within such a teacher-researcher role, educators carefully listen, observe, and document children's work and the growth of community in their classroom and are to provoke, co-construct, and stimulate thinking, and children's collaboration with peers. Teachers are committed to reflection about their own teaching and learning.
6. Documentation: Similar to the portfolio approach, documentation of children's work in progress is viewed as an important tool in the learning process for children, teachers, and parents. Pictures of children engaged in experiences, their words as they discuss what they are doing, feeling and thinking and the children's interpretation of experience through the visual media are displayed as a graphic presentation of the dynamics of learning. Documentation is used as assessment and advocacy.
7. Environment: Within the schools, great attention is to be given to the look and feel of the classroom. Environment is considered the "third teacher." Teachers have to carefully organize space for small and large group projects and small intimate spaces for one, two or three children. Documentation of children's work, plants, and collections that children have made from former outings are displayed both at the children's and adult eye level. Common space available to all children in the school includes dramatic play areas and worktables for children from different classrooms to come together.
Features of The constructivism approach:
Teachers Role:
• to co-explore the learning experience with the children
• to provoke ideas, problem solving, and conflict
• to take ideas from the children and return them for further exploration
• to organize the classroom and materials to be aesthetically pleasing
• to organize materials to help children make thoughtful decisions about the media
• to document children's progress: visual, videotape, tape recording, portfolios
• to help children see the connections in learning and experiences
• to help children express their knowledge through representational work
• to form a "collective" among other teachers and parents
• to have a dialogue about the projects with parents and other teachers
• To foster the connection between home, school and community
The constructivist view of education advocates that teachers should:
• Use cognitive terminology such as "classify," "analyze," "predict," and "create."
• Encourage and accept student autonomy and initiative.
• Use raw data and primary sources, along with manipulative, interactive, and physical materials.
• Allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies, and alter content.
• Inquire about students' understanding of concepts before sharing their own understanding of those concepts.
• Encourage students to engage in dialogue, both with the teacher and with one another.
• Encourage student inquiry by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions and encouraging students to ask questions of each other.
• Seek elaboration of students' initial responses.
• Engage students in experiences that might engender contradictions to their initial hypotheses and then encourage discussion.
• Allow wait time after posing questions.
• Provide time for students to construct relationships and create metaphors.
Nurture students' natural curiosity through frequent use of the learning cycle model.
Below is a list of the important principles that guide the work of a constructivist teacher:
1. Constructivist teachers encourage and accept student autonomy and initiative.
2. Constructivist teachers use raw data and primary sources along with manipulative, interactive, and physical materials.
3. Constructivist teachers use cognitive terminology such as "classify," "analyze," "predict," and "create" when framing tasks.
4. Constructivist teachers allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies, and alter content.
5. Constructivist teachers inquire about students' understandings of concepts before sharing their own understandings of those concepts.
6. Constructivist teachers encourage students to engage in dialogue both with the teacher and with one another.
7. Constructivist teachers encourage student inquiry by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions and encouraging students to ask questions of each other.
8. Constructivist teachers seek elaboration of students' initial responses.
9. Constructivist teachers engage students in experiences that might engender contradictions to their initial hypotheses and then encourage discussion.
10. Constructivist teachers allow a waiting time after posing questions.
11. Constructivist teachers provide time for students to construct relationships and create metaphors.
• Constructivist teachers nurture students' natural curiosity through frequent use of the learning cycle model
Strategies for enhancing Motivation and creating a class that is based on children creating their own meanings-child as the constructor of his own knowledge
1. Challenge Them
• Offer student opportunities to undertake real challenges. Encourage them to take intellectual risks. This gives students an opportunity to discover the relationship between effort and success; between success and motivation, and to develop higher self-concept.
• If the students do not see the need to make an effort they sometimes will not bother to make one. Even brilliant students are not motivated to achieve if the work is too easy. Gifted behaviors are often not evident until the student is actually being challenged. Most children are excited by a challenge if they have the strategies that they need to succeed.
2. Build on Strengths First
• Building on strengths first gives students an opportunity to use their talents to achieve success by developing their strengths. While they are engaged in these successful tasks we can help them to learn how to improve other skills (teach to specific needs) in an environment where the child cares about doing a good job.
• When the primary focus is on student weaknesses students are spending much of their time being unsuccessful, practicing what they do badly. This lowers self esteem and lowers motivation.
• Failure is un-motivating. Success is motivating when students understand why they are succeeding and are able to develop their confidence and competence.
3. Offer Choices
• Offering choices develops ownership. When the child makes decisions he or she is more likely to accept ownership & control of the results. This sense of control fosters responsibility. When the control belongs to the teacher so does the ownership. However, always offer choices that are equally acceptable in your eyes.
• Negotiate-How can students have input in order to reach the required goals? Can they reach necessary goals their way? When they achieve a non-negotiable goal perhaps they may have input on the follow-up activity. Remember it is not realistic for students of differing abilities to be expected to aim for the same goal using the same method. When children are offered opportunities to make decisions they learn a great deal about the consequences of their choices.
• They also learn to value themselves and their own decision-making ability. Where ever it is appropriate, take advantage of the student's talents and interests to motivate them. Choices can be offered in the areas of: Topics, learning Processes (methodologies) and Products. Within any set topic or theme there are usually a variety of sub-topics where students may identify a personal interest. Learning processes can be varied and students can be encouraged to find alternative strategies for solving problems & then they can discuss the merits and disadvantages of each. Permit student the choice of product. There are hundreds of alternatives ways of producing information. For checklists of alternative Topic, Process & Product ideas.
4. Provide a Secure Environment
• Permit children to fail without penalty. Learning how to deal with failure is critical for developing motivation and successful learning. Students should learn that they can and must learn from their mistakes
• . Fear of failure sometimes causes students to deliberately sabotage their own efforts because deliberate failure is easier to accept than the failures to which they fall victim. (No control is equated with being powerless.)
5. Teach Them How to Make Their Tasks More Manageable
• Narrowing or broadening the topic to a challenging but manageable size is very important for developing motivation. However, it is not just sufficient for us to just give them manageable activities. Not only is this is an essential problem solving strategy, but it is also an essential life skill.
• Children need to know how they can make their own activities more manageable. Even the most challenging tasks can be made more manageable by breaking them down into smaller parts and then prioritizing the steps. As each small part is achieved a measure of success is attained.
• As the successes mount up students begin to recognize their own enthusiasm for learning. (Effort and Struggle during skill development results in Success and Motivation)
6. Use Rewards & Punishment with caution
• Although there are appropriate places in education for both rewards and punishment, they are both external factors that can rob students of personal control. Obviously there must be consequences for different kinds of behaviors, and real success needs some kind of recognition or attention.
• However, both rewards and punishment can be negative factors in developing intrinsic motivation. Rewards cause students to work for the wrong reasons. Punishment often fosters resentment and lack of co-operation. When rewards are external factors, motivation is also external and it will only apply when monitored externally.
• Rewards are most effective when used with lower ability or unmotivated students when the rewards is used for a short time only.
• Never use rewards over a long period.
• Never increase the reward for increased expectations.
• Decrease the rewards as soon as they begin to become effective. Long use only reinforces the external control.
The real reward for good work must eventually become the satisfaction derived from effort and success
7. Help Students Develop an Internal focus of Control
• Focus of control is closely related to motivation. Students who feel they have the power to control some events in their lives are more likely to become self motivated than students who see themselves as powerless. If they don't believe they have any power/control over the events in their lives... then everything that goes wrong is someone else's fault, not theirs.
• The child who perceives that he or she has no power will either see himself as a victim of chance (and/or other people's power) or as a warrior who needs to gain power to control or manipulate other people in order to avoid being helpless.
• Children who have been loved too much, controlled too much, given too much power too early, rescued and/or blamed too often tend to be manipulative.
• Almost all unmotivated underachieving children manipulative adults by either active or passive behaviors.
8. Avoid Power Struggles
Poorly motivated students are often very manipulative. Avoid power struggles whenever possible, and never get into a power struggle unless you have the means to win. Choose your battles. Children who engage in power struggles also need to be offered choices, but the choices must always be limited to the ones that you find acceptable.
9. Use Ambiguity Occasionally
• Give children opportunities to learn strategies for dealing with ambiguity and or frustration. Some children are convinced that every question has only one right answer. Help them realize that there is often more than one right method or answer.
• If they see all questions as being either right or wrong they will probably see them as being good when they are right and bad when they are wrong. This doesn't leave much room for motivation.
• Brainstorming with someone else is an excellent strategy for looking for alternative interpretations of and solutions to the problem of ambiguity.
• Frustration can be motivating when you have problem solving strategies and you see problems as something to be solved rather than to be avoided.
Unmotivated underachieving students frequently use avoidance rather than an effective strategy when frustrated.
10. Offer Open-ended Activities to Develop Creativity
• Give them opportunities and strategies to develop their creativity.
• Students perform with higher motivation when their creativity is engaged. Challenge students to construct original & creative products to support their written reports.
11. Teach Students to Evaluate Themselves
• Self-evaluation needs to address the questions: "What was done well?" & "How can it be improved?" It is far more powerful for students to recognize the answers to these questions than it is for them to be told the answers.
• Student self-evaluation is often difficult for the first few attempts. Students want to achieve a high evaluation but are reluctant to "brag" about their success. It has been my experience that the majority of students lean towards being too hard on them, but some students can be unrealistically generous initially. The ability to realistically evaluate ones own performance improves with practice and is both empowering and highly motivating.
12. Attention Seeking Behaviors
• Unmotivated students frequently seek adult attention. They can actively demand attention or passively demand attention, and the attention they seek can be either negative or positive attention.
• Positive adult attention can be a highly motivating factor but only if it is earned by reasonable effort. It can reinforce poor motivation if it is overdone or given for the wrong reasons. Too much praise makes "no praise" look like an invitation for attention seeking behaviors. The child who is motivated by excessive praise may do very little when the praise is absent.
• Negative attention for some children is just as satisfying as positive attention and in fact if they are used to a great deal of negative attention it may be more comfortable because it is so familiar. Difficult as it is, ignoring demanding attention seeking behaviors is sometimes more effective than giving negative attention. However, positive attention should be used to reinforce acceptable behaviors.
• Passive students are the most difficult to motivate because they tend to waste their energy trying to get others to feel sorry for them. They refuse to take risks, sometimes sabotaging their own efforts to prove they deserve our pity. It is important to recognize these behaviors and guard against compounding the problem by being too sympathetic. Sympathy only convinces these students that they really do have a problem. It is important to recognize the moment when these students actually make some progress and to give the appropriate attention at that moment. They should receive a positive attention response any time they take a risk or make an effort.
13 Competition
• Competition can enhance or reduce motivation depending on how it is used. It is good for some, but it may result in a few winners and many losers.
• Unmotivated and or underachieving students often have difficulty dealing with defeat. Until they are ready to cope with defeat it is more productive to encourage students to compete against their own performance rather than with someone else's.
• Competing against oneself under controlled conditions means that everyone wins. Use the clock. Time their performance for 1 minute, estimate what can be accomplished in 5 minutes. And challenge them to beat their own record over a longer time span. Gradually increase the time factor and expectations. You can challenge students to compete against their own performance in the quantity and quality of their productivity, within a specific time frame or it can be used to increase on-task behavior or decrease inappropriate behavior. In fact most criteria which can be used to evaluate progress can be used for a student to compete against his/her own previous performance.
• The long term goal is to teach children to loose gracefully and use defeat as motivation to improve. (See self-evaluation.) Eventually students must be encouraged to see "failure" as a positive experience. Every loss in competition and every failed attempt is an opportunity to learn what can be improved.
14. Students Need To Understand The Relevance Of All Their School Activities
• Students who do not understand the relevance of a school activity are not usually motivated to accomplish it unless they are motivated to please the teacher. (External motivation.)
• Clearly establish the expected goal and required method. Let the students know the benefits that will be realized.
• This is especially important when no choices are being offered.
15. Perfectionism - Is It Good or Bad?
• Perfectionism goes beyond trying to do ones best. Perfectionism is getting hung-up on being perfect. Students need to take pride in their work but perfectionists allow their fear of making a mistake to inhibit progress. It can be seen in the child who keeps erasing everything, or keeps starting over making slow progress or not finishing. It can sometimes be seen in the child who procrastinates too much, forgets homework or loses work rather than admit it is not perfect.
• These children need to learn that completing work on time is more important than being perfect, attempting is more important than succeeding, and failure is an opportunity to learn. Students need to see us (teachers and parents) making mistakes occasionally. We need to model and demonstrate the process of learning and recovering from our mistakes.
• And we, as teachers need to remember that if it can be done perfectly, it is probably too easy. If it is perfect they are probably practicing (rehearsing) previously acquired knowledge or skills and may be learning nothing new at all.
16. Reinforce Required Strategies
• One reason students have difficulty sustaining their motivation when working independently is because they either don't understand or don't remember the required strategies. Never assume a student knows how to do something independently unless you see it demonstrated.
• Also children can sometimes remember all of the steps within a required strategy and still not understand why they are doing them. Conversely they can understand the strategy but forget the steps or the sequence involved. As Graham Foster has often said: "Just because it's been taught, doesn't mean it's been caught."
• The strategy therefore is to make sure that the skills required for an independent task are readily available when a student is expected to apply them. This can be done by oral review, by have students keep a note book on skills and strategies, or by using posters and skill charts on the walls. When a student appears unmotivated to work independently have him/her demonstrate that he knows what to do. Don't be unduly influenced by their ability to verbalize instructions. Verbalizing instructions means they remember the steps, it does not necessarily mean they know how to do them.
17. Teach A Variety Of Organizational Strategies
• Students need to know that there are countless numbers of effective organizational strategies. Initially it may be sufficient to have at least one effective method. However, as teachers we need to remember that non-sequential organization is not necessarily disorganized. Some children are very organized but they may be non-sequential or non- linear in their thought patterns. For these children a linear sequence of steps 1-10 may be inhibiting. They may be confused by what seems to be a logical sequence for a sequential thinker.
• A variety of organizational strategies encourages students to build on the strength of their own thinking style, and they will develop an arsenal of strategies to chose from. Eventually they will learn to vary the strategy to suit the requirements of the task.
18. Role Models
• Some apparently unmotivated student are not really unmotivated but are motivated to follow an inappropriate model. For example a significant person in their life might be demonstrating the role of "drop-out", "non-academic", "unsuccessful" or the "I didn't need to work because I was so clever or because it is boring " type. These students need a positive role model. Parents should be encouraged to fill this role, or an uncle, aunt, brother sister or even... the teacher.
• Teachers can become role models for students. We can demonstrate being an effective writer, an independent learner, a good loser etc. When time permits it is highly effective to model quality work by rewriting a few of their sentences or brief note facts (jot-notes) and ask them to decide which is better and why.
• Peer editing or self evaluation where rubrics and/or specific criteria is applied to the self-evaluation process can also serve to illustrate good work habits and quality work.
19. Differentiate Instruction with Tiered Assignments or Layered Curriculum techniques
• Differentiated Instruction is another good way to empower and motivate students. Students are very much aware how ability levels differ in the average classroom. Ask any student who in their class required enrichment or who reeds extra help and they can tell you.
• In my experience they can also easily identify other students performing at the same ability level as themselves. With this awareness comes an understanding that a single classroom activity can simultaneously be too difficult for some students and too easy for others. Once the issue of "what is fair" has been clarified students comfortably adapt to the idea of tiered assignments or Layered curriculum activities. However, it is necessary to make it clear that treating all students the same is not
Strategies for Differentiated Instruction:
20. Scaffolding
Scaffolding relates to the supportive role that a teacher undertakes to ensure success in activities where a student is being challenged. By consistent evaluation of student work teachers can provide just-in-time small group instruction to facilitate students being able to perform effectively at a level above that which they handle independently. It is important to remember that if a student can succeed thoroughly independently then he/she is only practicing something that has already been learned and the student is not being challenged to construct new meaning in the learning process. When encouraging students to stretch and take on greater challenges it is important the the teacher provide the structure and guidance to make the learning successful. Scaffolding for Succes
References:
In class room teaching the teachers must keep in mind the theory of multiple intelligence by
Howard Gardner and Piagets theory of development stages .
Bredo, E. (1994). Reconstructing educational psychology: Situated cognition and Deweyian pragmatism. Educational Psychologist, 29(1), 23-25.
Cobb, P. (1995). Continuing the conversation: A response to Smith. Educational Researcher, 24(6), 25-27.
Cognitive perspectives on peer learning (pp. 197-211). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. London: Sage Publications
Derry, S. J. (1999). A Fish called peer learning: Searching for common themes. In A. M. O'Donnell & A. King (Eds.),
Ernest, P. (March 23, 1999). Social Constructivism as a Philosophy of Mathematics: Radical Constructivism
Gredler, M. E. (1997). Learning and instruction: Theory into practice (3rd ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Kafai, Y., & Resnick, M. (1996). Constructionism in practice: Designing, thinking, and learning in a digital world. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kukla, A. (2000). Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science. New York: Routledge.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
McMahon, M. (1997, December). Social Constructivism and the World Wide Web - A Paradigm for Learning. Paper presented at the ASCILITE conference. Perth, Australia.
Prawat, R. S. (1995). Misleading Dewey: Reform, projects, and the language game.
Other Resoures
1. The Underachievement Syndrome, Causes & Cures. by Sylvia Rimm (1986)
2. Guidebook for Implementing the Trifocal Underachievement Program for Schools by Sylvia Rimm
3. Giftedness, Conflict and Underachievement by Joanne Whitmore Rand (1980)
4. Organizing Thinking by Howard & Sandra Black
5. Graphical Organizers
6. Graphical Organizers as Thinking Technology
7. The Graphic Organizer
8. Examples of Graphical Organizers
9. The Underachievement Syndrome, Causes & Cures. by Sylvia Rimm (1986)
Smarter
From teaching to facilitation a shift that is possible by involving the child as the main constructor of her/his knowledge.
Dr Anju khanna
Head
R&D
The circle
A space for primary educators
A sharing session held:
On: 17 June 08 at N.C.E.R.T
Venue: DELHI
For: PRIMARY TEACHER TRAINING WORKSHOP
“In my experience... achievement depends on willingness to accept a challenge, take risks, and make errors and the belief that one has the control over the outcomes. Achievement is hindered by perfectionism, fear of failure, and the belief that control, credit and/or blame belong to someone else. “
P. Theroux Jan 1994
Brain Research:
• "Three principles from brain research: emotional safety, appropriate challenges, and self constructed meaning suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach to classroom instruction teaching is ineffective for most students and harmful to some."
”No two children are alike. An enriched environment for one is not necessarily enriched for another. "
• No two children learn in the identical way.
• In the classroom we should teach children to think for themselves.
• One way is to group children so they are talking to each other, they are asking questions of each other, they are learning to be teachers.
"So our environment, including the classroom environment, is not a neutral place. We educators are either growing dendrites or letting them wither and die. The trick is to determine what constitutes an enriched environment.
A few facts about the brain's natural proclivities will assist us in making these determinations, determinations that reveal how children construct their own knowledge:
1. The brain has not evolved to its present condition by taking in meaningless data; an enriched environment gives students an opportunity to make sense out of what they are learning, what some call the opportunity to "make meaning"
2. The Brain develops in an integrated fashion over time. Babies do not talk one week, tie their shoes the next, and then work on their emotional development. An enriched environment addresses multiple aspects of development simultaneously.
3. The brain is essentially curious and it must be to survive. It constantly seeks connections between the new and the known. Learning is a process of active Construction by the learner and enrichment gives students the opportunity to relate what they are learning to what they already know.
That children construct their own learning owes a theoretical kinship with:
Vygotsky who said:
• “Social interaction is an important tool; in development of cognition
• social learning precedes development,
• social interaction leads to increased knowledge ,
Jean Piaget said:
• “Knowledge is actively constructed at a certain stage of development all children will become aware of “self”.
A mother places a mark on a child’s face without the child’s knowledge. She then places the child in front of a mirror. If the child has self awareness, he will reach to his face and touch the mark. However, if he has not developed self awareness, he will reach out to the mirror and try to touch the mark. He is unaware that it is his image in the mirror
• Students need to develop the "mind-tools" that will enable them to become active participants in the learning process.
• This means students are given choices, allowed to make decisions and required to construct meaning from the facts by developing presentations, products or solutions, in order to apply their understanding of the situation to the task of solving problems.
• Students need to learn how to question, plan, organize, interpret, develop insight, analyze, synthesize and self-evaluate.
• The consequence of this approach is seeing students more fully engaged in the learning process, and this empowers students.
• "Engaged Learning" is active involvement. This is highly relevant learning and the skills are transferable to the process of real life problem solving. In employing these strategies we are equipping our students with life-long learning skills.
• "Mind tools" are the skills, strategies and the (hardware) tools that enable a learner to become an engaged, responsible and productive learner.
Case study at a leading public school:
Madhu mittal is a school English teacher who has struggled for years when it came to teaching poems and stories as text in English to her students. In the past, students became bored immediately with reading or reciting any of the poems /text aloud in class and consistently complained that the language was not too difficult to understand nor did she feel that the children understood any fine aspect of the text, in-fact they were not enjoying the class.
Desperate for any degree of engagement, Madhu decided to take a social constructivist approach to poetry and story narration in class v with her students.
Instead of reading the text aloud in class, allowing the students to remain passive and uninvolved with the text, Madhu divided the class into five cooperative groups and assigned the groups to choose reading ,drawing ,rendering with craft ,arranging the new sounds . She then explained that each group was to turn their assigned act into a modern-day puppet show. The groups were to read, interpret, and translate their understanding of the poem into a language of their understanding (they were even encouraged to use common slang when appropriate.)
They were also required to create puppets to represent the characters and ultimately perform their act for the rest of the class. Each group worked together with Madhu‘s guidance to create a shared understanding of their assigned act and use that shared understanding as a basis for their construction of the modern-day puppet show. In the end, they produced a product that was created through a social learning process.
The class was divided into groups of 10, because each group was comprised of various learners with diverse interests and backgrounds, each member had something unique to offer in their group’s construction of the puppet show.
One particular group was assigned stanza one .They included Henu,, who moved from Gujarat and did not still have friends, Nitin who loved music specially the hip hop kind music Nina, who loved to write, Ramesh who enjoyed comic books and liked to draw, Prem was the quiet one, Meera, Ishita, Vivek -were excited about different aspects of the project but would have been very uncomfortable trying to understand their assigned act of the text and turn it in to a modern puppet show on their own.
At the first meeting, the group decided it was best to start by reading and discussing stanza one together; Nina offered her writing skills to the task of making notes about the progression of the plot and the characters’ actions as the group interacted and constructed meaning out of what they read. Once they felt as though they had a firm understanding of the poem they shared their findings and notes with Madhu Mittal who, in turn, provided feedback.
At the next meeting, they moved on to the more creative aspects of the project, where everyone was able to contribute their own personal skills and talents. The group decided to present their act in the local gujrati dialect.
Growing up in Gujarat Henu was very familiar with the gujrati dialect and culture, so she and Nina joined forces in writing a script for the puppet show. For background music, they decided hip-hop would fit well with the gujrati influence; Vivek agreed to work on finding hip-hop selections that would work well with the story. Jeevan gladly volunteered to take on the creation of the puppets. He wanted to use what he had learned about the characters through the group’s previous interactions and create modern interpretations with a comic book influence.
By the time the product was constructed, each group member’s mark was on the final outcome, so each had a sense of ownership. The inter subjectivity the students experienced through this group project allowed them to extend their understanding of the authors story.
In addition to completing the part each agreed to do, the students had to communicate, share and negotiate to create the final product. The students brought their diverse interests and collaborated to create their finished product. Madhu’s use of the social constructivist approach to this lesson proved successful as the students came to a clear and engaged understanding of the text her ultimate goal.
What is Social Constructivism and what did Madhu do?
What Madhu did was simple she shifted the onus of being the only one with the knowledge to activating the personal motivation of her class by actually involving them with initially what they were good at and then letting them actually learn from collaborating with each other
Constructivism is a much needed shift that teachers like Madhu have experimented with and brought to the class room it emphasizes the importance of culture and context in understanding to the main text -what occurs in society and constructing knowledge based on this understanding. This perspective is closely associated with many contemporary theories, most notably the developmental theories of Vygotsky and Bruner, and Bandura's social cognitive theory
Assumptions of Social Constructivism
Social constructivism is based on specific assumptions about reality, knowledge, and learning. To understand and apply models of instruction that are rooted in the perspectives of social constructivists, it is important to know the premises that underlie them.
Reality: Social constructivists believe that reality is constructed through human activity. Members of a society together invent the properties of the world . For the social constructivist, reality cannot be discovered: it does not exist prior to its social invention.
Knowledge: To social constructivists, knowledge is also a human product, and is socially and culturally constructed. Individuals create meaning through their interactions with each other and with the environment they live in.
Learning: Social constructivists view learning as a social process. It does not take place only within an individual, nor is it a passive development of behaviors that are shaped by external forces. Meaningful learning occurs when individuals are engaged in social activities.
Inter subjectivity of Social Meanings
Inter -subjectivity is a shared understanding among individuals whose interaction is based on common interests and assumptions that form the ground for their communication. Communications and interactions entail socially agreed-upon ideas of the world and the social patterns and rules of language use).Construction of social meanings, therefore, involves inter-subjectivity among individuals. Social meanings and knowledge are shaped and evolve through negotiation within the communicating groups. Any personal meanings shaped through these experiences are affected by the inter subjectivity of the community to which the people belong.
Inter -subjectivity not only provides the grounds for communication but also supports people to extend their understanding of new information and activities among the group members.
Knowledge is derived from interactions between people and their environments and resides within cultures. The construction of knowledge is also influenced by the inter subjectivity formed by cultural and historical factors of the community. When the members of the community are aware of their inter subjective meanings, it is easier for them to understand new information and activities that arise in the community’s Social Context and becomes the basis for Learning
Some social constructivists discuss two aspects of social context that largely affect the nature and extent of the learning:
Historical developments inherited by the learner as a member of a particular culture. Symbol systems, such as language, logic, and mathematical systems, are learned throughout the learner's life. These symbol systems dictate how and what is learned.
The nature of the learner's social interaction with knowledgeable members of the society is important. Without the social interaction with more knowledgeable others, it is impossible to acquire social meaning of important symbol systems and learn how to use them. Young children develop their thinking abilities by interacting with adults.
General Perspectives of Social Constructivism on Learning
Social constructivists see as crucial both the context in which learning occurs and the social contexts that learners bring to their learning environment. There are four general perspectives that inform how we could facilitate the learning within a framework of social constructivism
Cognitive tools perspective: Cognitive tools perspective focuses on the learning of cognitive skills and strategies. Students engage in those social learning activities that involve hands-on project-based methods and utilization of discipline-based cognitive tools .Together they produce a product and, as a group, impose meaning on it through the social learning process.
Idea-based social constructivism: Idea-based social constructivism sets education's priority on important concepts in the various disciplines (e.g. part-whole relations in mathematics, photosynthesis in science, and point of view in literature, These "big ideas" expand learner vision and become important foundations for learners' thinking and on construction of social meaning
Pragmatic or emergent approach: Social constructivists with this perspective assert that the implementation of social constructivism in class should be emergent as the need arises Its proponents hold that knowledge, meaning, and understanding of the world can be addressed in the classroom from both the view of individual learner and the collective view of the entire class
Transactional or situated cognitive perspectives: This perspective focuses on the relationship between the people and their environment. Humans are a part of the constructed environment (including social relationships); the environment is in turn one of the characteristics that constitutes the individual When a mind operates, its owner is interacting with the environment. Therefore, if the environment and social relationships among group members change, the tasks of each individual also change. Learning thus should not take place in isolation from the environment.
Social Constructivism and Instructional Models
Instructional models based on the social constructivist perspective stress the need for collaboration among learners and with practitioners in the society assert that a society’s practical knowledge is situated in relations among practitioners, their practice, and the social organization and political economy of communities of practice. For this reason, learning should involve such knowledge and practice . Social constructivist approaches can include reciprocal teaching, peer collaboration, cognitive apprenticeships, problem-based instruction, and other methods that involve learning with others
The Guiding Principles of Constructivism
• Posing problems of emerging relevance to students
.
• structuring learning around primary concepts - the quest for essence
• Seeking and valuing students' points of view
.
• Adapting curriculum to address students' suppositions
.
• assessing student learning in the context of teaching
• The teacher's role has changed in recent years. There has been a shift of emphasis from instructional techniques to developing learning techniques. Our role is no longer that of the "sage on the stage". Today our role leans more towards facilitator or "guide on the side".
• Our role is to increase student motivation and develop the skills or strategies that make a student more competent and to structure the learning environment so that students are able to take ownership of their own learning. Fortunately, many of the strategies that "empower" and "engage" students also lead to increased motivation. The focus here is on the strategies that teachers may use to develop and maintain motivation in school age students.
• Motivation and achievement have long been recognized to have a close cause-effect relationship, as of course have ability and achievement. The anticipated relationship is: the higher the ability, the higher the expected achievement levels. However logical this premise might appear to be, it does not always prove to be the case.
• It is therefore understandable that research into the connection between motivation, ability and achievement has focused on the underachieving gifted student because they are the examples that are most difficult to explain.
• Hailed as an exemplary model of early childhood education, the theory of constructivism in education is committed to the creation of conditions for learning that will enhance and facilitate children's construction of "his or her own powers of thinking through the synthesis of all the expressive, communicative and cognitive languages" -Edwards and Forman,.
• The constructivism approach can be viewed as a resource and inspiration to help educators, parents, and children as they work together to further develop their own educational programs. It’s based on the following principles
1. Emergent Curriculum: An emergent curriculum is one that builds upon the interests of children. Topics for study are captured from the talk of children, through community or family events, as well as the known interests of children (puddles, shadow, dinosaurs, etc.). Team planning is an essential component of the emergent curriculum. Teachers work together to formulate hypotheses about the possible directions of a project, the materials needed, and possible parent and/or community support and involvement.
2. Project Work: Projects, also emergent, are in-depth studies of concepts, ideas, and interests, which arise within the group. Considered as an adventure, projects may last one week or could continue throughout the school year. Throughout a project, teachers help children make decisions about the direction of study, the ways in which the group will research the topic, the representational medium that will demonstrate and showcase the topic and the selection of materials needed to represent the work. Long-term projects enhance lifelong learning.
3. Representational Development: Consistent with Howard Gardner's notion of schooling for multiple intelligences, the approach calls for the integration of the graphic arts as tools for cognitive, linguistic, and social development. Presentation of concepts and hypotheses in multiple forms of representation -- print, art, construction, drama, music, puppetry, and shadow play are viewed as essential to children's understanding of experience. Children have 100 languages, multiple symbolic language
4. Collaboration: Collaborative group work, both large and small, is considered valuable and necessary to advance cognitive development. Children are encouraged to dialogue, critique, compare, negotiate, hypothesize, and problem solve through group work. Within this approach multiple perspectives promote both a sense of group membership and the uniqueness of self. There high emphasis on the collaboration among home-school-community to support the learning of the child.
5. Teachers as Researchers: The teacher's role within this approach is complex. Working as co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and guide as she/he lends expertise to children -Within such a teacher-researcher role, educators carefully listen, observe, and document children's work and the growth of community in their classroom and are to provoke, co-construct, and stimulate thinking, and children's collaboration with peers. Teachers are committed to reflection about their own teaching and learning.
6. Documentation: Similar to the portfolio approach, documentation of children's work in progress is viewed as an important tool in the learning process for children, teachers, and parents. Pictures of children engaged in experiences, their words as they discuss what they are doing, feeling and thinking and the children's interpretation of experience through the visual media are displayed as a graphic presentation of the dynamics of learning. Documentation is used as assessment and advocacy.
7. Environment: Within the schools, great attention is to be given to the look and feel of the classroom. Environment is considered the "third teacher." Teachers have to carefully organize space for small and large group projects and small intimate spaces for one, two or three children. Documentation of children's work, plants, and collections that children have made from former outings are displayed both at the children's and adult eye level. Common space available to all children in the school includes dramatic play areas and worktables for children from different classrooms to come together.
Features of The constructivism approach:
Teachers Role:
• to co-explore the learning experience with the children
• to provoke ideas, problem solving, and conflict
• to take ideas from the children and return them for further exploration
• to organize the classroom and materials to be aesthetically pleasing
• to organize materials to help children make thoughtful decisions about the media
• to document children's progress: visual, videotape, tape recording, portfolios
• to help children see the connections in learning and experiences
• to help children express their knowledge through representational work
• to form a "collective" among other teachers and parents
• to have a dialogue about the projects with parents and other teachers
• To foster the connection between home, school and community
The constructivist view of education advocates that teachers should:
• Use cognitive terminology such as "classify," "analyze," "predict," and "create."
• Encourage and accept student autonomy and initiative.
• Use raw data and primary sources, along with manipulative, interactive, and physical materials.
• Allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies, and alter content.
• Inquire about students' understanding of concepts before sharing their own understanding of those concepts.
• Encourage students to engage in dialogue, both with the teacher and with one another.
• Encourage student inquiry by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions and encouraging students to ask questions of each other.
• Seek elaboration of students' initial responses.
• Engage students in experiences that might engender contradictions to their initial hypotheses and then encourage discussion.
• Allow wait time after posing questions.
• Provide time for students to construct relationships and create metaphors.
Nurture students' natural curiosity through frequent use of the learning cycle model.
Below is a list of the important principles that guide the work of a constructivist teacher:
1. Constructivist teachers encourage and accept student autonomy and initiative.
2. Constructivist teachers use raw data and primary sources along with manipulative, interactive, and physical materials.
3. Constructivist teachers use cognitive terminology such as "classify," "analyze," "predict," and "create" when framing tasks.
4. Constructivist teachers allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies, and alter content.
5. Constructivist teachers inquire about students' understandings of concepts before sharing their own understandings of those concepts.
6. Constructivist teachers encourage students to engage in dialogue both with the teacher and with one another.
7. Constructivist teachers encourage student inquiry by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions and encouraging students to ask questions of each other.
8. Constructivist teachers seek elaboration of students' initial responses.
9. Constructivist teachers engage students in experiences that might engender contradictions to their initial hypotheses and then encourage discussion.
10. Constructivist teachers allow a waiting time after posing questions.
11. Constructivist teachers provide time for students to construct relationships and create metaphors.
• Constructivist teachers nurture students' natural curiosity through frequent use of the learning cycle model
Strategies for enhancing Motivation and creating a class that is based on children creating their own meanings-child as the constructor of his own knowledge
1. Challenge Them
• Offer student opportunities to undertake real challenges. Encourage them to take intellectual risks. This gives students an opportunity to discover the relationship between effort and success; between success and motivation, and to develop higher self-concept.
• If the students do not see the need to make an effort they sometimes will not bother to make one. Even brilliant students are not motivated to achieve if the work is too easy. Gifted behaviors are often not evident until the student is actually being challenged. Most children are excited by a challenge if they have the strategies that they need to succeed.
2. Build on Strengths First
• Building on strengths first gives students an opportunity to use their talents to achieve success by developing their strengths. While they are engaged in these successful tasks we can help them to learn how to improve other skills (teach to specific needs) in an environment where the child cares about doing a good job.
• When the primary focus is on student weaknesses students are spending much of their time being unsuccessful, practicing what they do badly. This lowers self esteem and lowers motivation.
• Failure is un-motivating. Success is motivating when students understand why they are succeeding and are able to develop their confidence and competence.
3. Offer Choices
• Offering choices develops ownership. When the child makes decisions he or she is more likely to accept ownership & control of the results. This sense of control fosters responsibility. When the control belongs to the teacher so does the ownership. However, always offer choices that are equally acceptable in your eyes.
• Negotiate-How can students have input in order to reach the required goals? Can they reach necessary goals their way? When they achieve a non-negotiable goal perhaps they may have input on the follow-up activity. Remember it is not realistic for students of differing abilities to be expected to aim for the same goal using the same method. When children are offered opportunities to make decisions they learn a great deal about the consequences of their choices.
• They also learn to value themselves and their own decision-making ability. Where ever it is appropriate, take advantage of the student's talents and interests to motivate them. Choices can be offered in the areas of: Topics, learning Processes (methodologies) and Products. Within any set topic or theme there are usually a variety of sub-topics where students may identify a personal interest. Learning processes can be varied and students can be encouraged to find alternative strategies for solving problems & then they can discuss the merits and disadvantages of each. Permit student the choice of product. There are hundreds of alternatives ways of producing information. For checklists of alternative Topic, Process & Product ideas.
4. Provide a Secure Environment
• Permit children to fail without penalty. Learning how to deal with failure is critical for developing motivation and successful learning. Students should learn that they can and must learn from their mistakes
• . Fear of failure sometimes causes students to deliberately sabotage their own efforts because deliberate failure is easier to accept than the failures to which they fall victim. (No control is equated with being powerless.)
5. Teach Them How to Make Their Tasks More Manageable
• Narrowing or broadening the topic to a challenging but manageable size is very important for developing motivation. However, it is not just sufficient for us to just give them manageable activities. Not only is this is an essential problem solving strategy, but it is also an essential life skill.
• Children need to know how they can make their own activities more manageable. Even the most challenging tasks can be made more manageable by breaking them down into smaller parts and then prioritizing the steps. As each small part is achieved a measure of success is attained.
• As the successes mount up students begin to recognize their own enthusiasm for learning. (Effort and Struggle during skill development results in Success and Motivation)
6. Use Rewards & Punishment with caution
• Although there are appropriate places in education for both rewards and punishment, they are both external factors that can rob students of personal control. Obviously there must be consequences for different kinds of behaviors, and real success needs some kind of recognition or attention.
• However, both rewards and punishment can be negative factors in developing intrinsic motivation. Rewards cause students to work for the wrong reasons. Punishment often fosters resentment and lack of co-operation. When rewards are external factors, motivation is also external and it will only apply when monitored externally.
• Rewards are most effective when used with lower ability or unmotivated students when the rewards is used for a short time only.
• Never use rewards over a long period.
• Never increase the reward for increased expectations.
• Decrease the rewards as soon as they begin to become effective. Long use only reinforces the external control.
The real reward for good work must eventually become the satisfaction derived from effort and success
7. Help Students Develop an Internal focus of Control
• Focus of control is closely related to motivation. Students who feel they have the power to control some events in their lives are more likely to become self motivated than students who see themselves as powerless. If they don't believe they have any power/control over the events in their lives... then everything that goes wrong is someone else's fault, not theirs.
• The child who perceives that he or she has no power will either see himself as a victim of chance (and/or other people's power) or as a warrior who needs to gain power to control or manipulate other people in order to avoid being helpless.
• Children who have been loved too much, controlled too much, given too much power too early, rescued and/or blamed too often tend to be manipulative.
• Almost all unmotivated underachieving children manipulative adults by either active or passive behaviors.
8. Avoid Power Struggles
Poorly motivated students are often very manipulative. Avoid power struggles whenever possible, and never get into a power struggle unless you have the means to win. Choose your battles. Children who engage in power struggles also need to be offered choices, but the choices must always be limited to the ones that you find acceptable.
9. Use Ambiguity Occasionally
• Give children opportunities to learn strategies for dealing with ambiguity and or frustration. Some children are convinced that every question has only one right answer. Help them realize that there is often more than one right method or answer.
• If they see all questions as being either right or wrong they will probably see them as being good when they are right and bad when they are wrong. This doesn't leave much room for motivation.
• Brainstorming with someone else is an excellent strategy for looking for alternative interpretations of and solutions to the problem of ambiguity.
• Frustration can be motivating when you have problem solving strategies and you see problems as something to be solved rather than to be avoided.
Unmotivated underachieving students frequently use avoidance rather than an effective strategy when frustrated.
10. Offer Open-ended Activities to Develop Creativity
• Give them opportunities and strategies to develop their creativity.
• Students perform with higher motivation when their creativity is engaged. Challenge students to construct original & creative products to support their written reports.
11. Teach Students to Evaluate Themselves
• Self-evaluation needs to address the questions: "What was done well?" & "How can it be improved?" It is far more powerful for students to recognize the answers to these questions than it is for them to be told the answers.
• Student self-evaluation is often difficult for the first few attempts. Students want to achieve a high evaluation but are reluctant to "brag" about their success. It has been my experience that the majority of students lean towards being too hard on them, but some students can be unrealistically generous initially. The ability to realistically evaluate ones own performance improves with practice and is both empowering and highly motivating.
12. Attention Seeking Behaviors
• Unmotivated students frequently seek adult attention. They can actively demand attention or passively demand attention, and the attention they seek can be either negative or positive attention.
• Positive adult attention can be a highly motivating factor but only if it is earned by reasonable effort. It can reinforce poor motivation if it is overdone or given for the wrong reasons. Too much praise makes "no praise" look like an invitation for attention seeking behaviors. The child who is motivated by excessive praise may do very little when the praise is absent.
• Negative attention for some children is just as satisfying as positive attention and in fact if they are used to a great deal of negative attention it may be more comfortable because it is so familiar. Difficult as it is, ignoring demanding attention seeking behaviors is sometimes more effective than giving negative attention. However, positive attention should be used to reinforce acceptable behaviors.
• Passive students are the most difficult to motivate because they tend to waste their energy trying to get others to feel sorry for them. They refuse to take risks, sometimes sabotaging their own efforts to prove they deserve our pity. It is important to recognize these behaviors and guard against compounding the problem by being too sympathetic. Sympathy only convinces these students that they really do have a problem. It is important to recognize the moment when these students actually make some progress and to give the appropriate attention at that moment. They should receive a positive attention response any time they take a risk or make an effort.
13 Competition
• Competition can enhance or reduce motivation depending on how it is used. It is good for some, but it may result in a few winners and many losers.
• Unmotivated and or underachieving students often have difficulty dealing with defeat. Until they are ready to cope with defeat it is more productive to encourage students to compete against their own performance rather than with someone else's.
• Competing against oneself under controlled conditions means that everyone wins. Use the clock. Time their performance for 1 minute, estimate what can be accomplished in 5 minutes. And challenge them to beat their own record over a longer time span. Gradually increase the time factor and expectations. You can challenge students to compete against their own performance in the quantity and quality of their productivity, within a specific time frame or it can be used to increase on-task behavior or decrease inappropriate behavior. In fact most criteria which can be used to evaluate progress can be used for a student to compete against his/her own previous performance.
• The long term goal is to teach children to loose gracefully and use defeat as motivation to improve. (See self-evaluation.) Eventually students must be encouraged to see "failure" as a positive experience. Every loss in competition and every failed attempt is an opportunity to learn what can be improved.
14. Students Need To Understand The Relevance Of All Their School Activities
• Students who do not understand the relevance of a school activity are not usually motivated to accomplish it unless they are motivated to please the teacher. (External motivation.)
• Clearly establish the expected goal and required method. Let the students know the benefits that will be realized.
• This is especially important when no choices are being offered.
15. Perfectionism - Is It Good or Bad?
• Perfectionism goes beyond trying to do ones best. Perfectionism is getting hung-up on being perfect. Students need to take pride in their work but perfectionists allow their fear of making a mistake to inhibit progress. It can be seen in the child who keeps erasing everything, or keeps starting over making slow progress or not finishing. It can sometimes be seen in the child who procrastinates too much, forgets homework or loses work rather than admit it is not perfect.
• These children need to learn that completing work on time is more important than being perfect, attempting is more important than succeeding, and failure is an opportunity to learn. Students need to see us (teachers and parents) making mistakes occasionally. We need to model and demonstrate the process of learning and recovering from our mistakes.
• And we, as teachers need to remember that if it can be done perfectly, it is probably too easy. If it is perfect they are probably practicing (rehearsing) previously acquired knowledge or skills and may be learning nothing new at all.
16. Reinforce Required Strategies
• One reason students have difficulty sustaining their motivation when working independently is because they either don't understand or don't remember the required strategies. Never assume a student knows how to do something independently unless you see it demonstrated.
• Also children can sometimes remember all of the steps within a required strategy and still not understand why they are doing them. Conversely they can understand the strategy but forget the steps or the sequence involved. As Graham Foster has often said: "Just because it's been taught, doesn't mean it's been caught."
• The strategy therefore is to make sure that the skills required for an independent task are readily available when a student is expected to apply them. This can be done by oral review, by have students keep a note book on skills and strategies, or by using posters and skill charts on the walls. When a student appears unmotivated to work independently have him/her demonstrate that he knows what to do. Don't be unduly influenced by their ability to verbalize instructions. Verbalizing instructions means they remember the steps, it does not necessarily mean they know how to do them.
17. Teach A Variety Of Organizational Strategies
• Students need to know that there are countless numbers of effective organizational strategies. Initially it may be sufficient to have at least one effective method. However, as teachers we need to remember that non-sequential organization is not necessarily disorganized. Some children are very organized but they may be non-sequential or non- linear in their thought patterns. For these children a linear sequence of steps 1-10 may be inhibiting. They may be confused by what seems to be a logical sequence for a sequential thinker.
• A variety of organizational strategies encourages students to build on the strength of their own thinking style, and they will develop an arsenal of strategies to chose from. Eventually they will learn to vary the strategy to suit the requirements of the task.
18. Role Models
• Some apparently unmotivated student are not really unmotivated but are motivated to follow an inappropriate model. For example a significant person in their life might be demonstrating the role of "drop-out", "non-academic", "unsuccessful" or the "I didn't need to work because I was so clever or because it is boring " type. These students need a positive role model. Parents should be encouraged to fill this role, or an uncle, aunt, brother sister or even... the teacher.
• Teachers can become role models for students. We can demonstrate being an effective writer, an independent learner, a good loser etc. When time permits it is highly effective to model quality work by rewriting a few of their sentences or brief note facts (jot-notes) and ask them to decide which is better and why.
• Peer editing or self evaluation where rubrics and/or specific criteria is applied to the self-evaluation process can also serve to illustrate good work habits and quality work.
19. Differentiate Instruction with Tiered Assignments or Layered Curriculum techniques
• Differentiated Instruction is another good way to empower and motivate students. Students are very much aware how ability levels differ in the average classroom. Ask any student who in their class required enrichment or who reeds extra help and they can tell you.
• In my experience they can also easily identify other students performing at the same ability level as themselves. With this awareness comes an understanding that a single classroom activity can simultaneously be too difficult for some students and too easy for others. Once the issue of "what is fair" has been clarified students comfortably adapt to the idea of tiered assignments or Layered curriculum activities. However, it is necessary to make it clear that treating all students the same is not
Strategies for Differentiated Instruction:
20. Scaffolding
Scaffolding relates to the supportive role that a teacher undertakes to ensure success in activities where a student is being challenged. By consistent evaluation of student work teachers can provide just-in-time small group instruction to facilitate students being able to perform effectively at a level above that which they handle independently. It is important to remember that if a student can succeed thoroughly independently then he/she is only practicing something that has already been learned and the student is not being challenged to construct new meaning in the learning process. When encouraging students to stretch and take on greater challenges it is important the the teacher provide the structure and guidance to make the learning successful. Scaffolding for Succes
References:
In class room teaching the teachers must keep in mind the theory of multiple intelligence by
Howard Gardner and Piagets theory of development stages .
Bredo, E. (1994). Reconstructing educational psychology: Situated cognition and Deweyian pragmatism. Educational Psychologist, 29(1), 23-25.
Cobb, P. (1995). Continuing the conversation: A response to Smith. Educational Researcher, 24(6), 25-27.
Cognitive perspectives on peer learning (pp. 197-211). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. London: Sage Publications
Derry, S. J. (1999). A Fish called peer learning: Searching for common themes. In A. M. O'Donnell & A. King (Eds.),
Ernest, P. (March 23, 1999). Social Constructivism as a Philosophy of Mathematics: Radical Constructivism
Gredler, M. E. (1997). Learning and instruction: Theory into practice (3rd ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Kafai, Y., & Resnick, M. (1996). Constructionism in practice: Designing, thinking, and learning in a digital world. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kukla, A. (2000). Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science. New York: Routledge.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
McMahon, M. (1997, December). Social Constructivism and the World Wide Web - A Paradigm for Learning. Paper presented at the ASCILITE conference. Perth, Australia.
Prawat, R. S. (1995). Misleading Dewey: Reform, projects, and the language game.
Other Resoures
1. The Underachievement Syndrome, Causes & Cures. by Sylvia Rimm (1986)
2. Guidebook for Implementing the Trifocal Underachievement Program for Schools by Sylvia Rimm
3. Giftedness, Conflict and Underachievement by Joanne Whitmore Rand (1980)
4. Organizing Thinking by Howard & Sandra Black
5. Graphical Organizers
6. Graphical Organizers as Thinking Technology
7. The Graphic Organizer
8. Examples of Graphical Organizers
9. The Underachievement Syndrome, Causes & Cures. by Sylvia Rimm (1986)
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