CONSTRUCTIVISM: Strengthening the bridge between the 21st century skills and the Science & Engineering practices
“Do not confine your children to your own learning for they were born in another time!”
The Hebrew proverb reminds us that our learners, or shall we say the millennials, have cognitive needs that are different from what their educators had when they were still learners themselves. Furthermore, the Flynn Effect provides the challenge for teachers to cope with the advancing level of intelligence of the new generation of learners. In the 21st century classroom, the teacher is no longer the lone authority on the subject matter but rather a co-learner and a facilitator of meaning making. Hence, there is no other more crucial educative moment for constructivism than the present time.
Murphy (1997) defined constructivism as a paradigm where “knowledge is constructed by the individual through his interactions with his environment”. In this view, the learners do not passively receive information and practice rote learning but rather actively participate in the endeavor to “make sense of the world” through experiences that provide opportunities to develop meaning and understanding. In the most practical way of defining how a teacher would know if a learner understands, we can consider the six facets of understanding based on the Understanding by Design framework proposed by Wiggins and McTighe. A learner understands if he/she can explain, interpret, apply, perceive another perspective, do self-reflection, and express empathy. The BSCS (2004), through various NIH modules on science education, equates the constructivist approach into active learning which means that are involved “in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing”. The NIH modules are all designed for active, collaborative, and inquiry-based learning in biological science. In an active learning class, students are involved in more than listening. Teaching strategies place less emphasis on transmitting information and more on developing students’ skills. Students are involved in higher-order thinking such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Instructors encourage students to explore their own understandings, attitudes, and values through more opportunities for engaged activities such as reading, discussing, and writing. In addition, academic learning time is spent more on integrated and collaborative tasks.
The 5E Instructional Model is one example of an instructional design or framework that exemplifies constructivism as an approach the acknowledges the role of the student as an active agent who “constructs” meaning out of his or her interactions with events (Perkins, 1992). According to this view, rather than passively absorbing information, the student redefines, reorganizes, elaborates, and changes his or her initial understandings through interactions with phenomena, the environment, and other individuals. In other words, the student interprets objects and phenomena and then internalizes this interpretation in terms of previous experiences (NIH-BSCS, 2004). A constructivist view of learning recognizes that the development of ideas and the acquisition of lasting understandings take time and experiences (Saunders, 1992). The key components of the 5E model, so-called because it takes students through five phases of learning that are easily described using five words that begin with the letter “E”: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. The role of the teacher based on these 5Es are further explained in the table below.
