The Human Beings (Homo sapiens) are the highest evolved of all species in this world. There is an inherent potential in each child to learn. It is in fact very interesting to watch an infant grow. Many a time he surprises even his own parents, with a new skill in the learning of which there is no conscious contribution of these adults. That is why Swami Vivekananda says “Man is the Taj Mahal of God’s creations”. Endowed with the unique power called the mind the infinite knowledge is in one’s own mind. Swamiji is emphatic about this. According to him, “No knowledge comes from outside; it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows', should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils'; what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge. You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.” He further asserts “You can not teach a child, you can only facilitate his/her learning, just like you can not grow a plant, you can only facilitate its growth by loosening the soil allowing sunlight and providing water.”
Does it mean then that the teacher is non existent? That the child is left to fend for himself in constructing his own knowledge? Let us consider the following two views:
Constructivist View is based on the idea that the dialectic or interactive process of development and learning through the student’s active construction should be facilitated and promoted by adults.
Maturationist View is based on the idea that the students’ naturally occurring development should be allowed to flower without adult intervention in a permissive environment.
In a way, in my personal opinion both the views really converge if we elaborate on the features of the maturationist’s permissive environment to include teachers, parents and equate it to the adult component of the constructivists and call all such contributors in a child’s active learning as facilitators. Then the “constructivist teacher” emerges as though a butterfly from its cocoon of the indefinitely many roles in which a traditional teacher had been hitherto cloaked.
Though one dare not think that one has grown a plant from its seed, yet without proper facilitating it will be wild growth! Education is about refinement. Allowing wild growth will be only detrimental. Thus a teacher as facilitator is what a constructivist teacher is about. Such a teacher’s purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image. The following two quotes on education succinctly prescribe the essentials of educational commitment.
“The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort” - Ayn Rand
“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men” - Bill Beattie
It is all very well to propound lofty ideals but a down to earth, thread bare analysis of ground realities is what would assist in turning these ideals into functional models. The philosophy of constructivism being child centric, what the constructivist teacher has to contend with is individualized instruction.
The task of a teacher in a class room is very beautifully described by Donald D. Quinn. He says, “If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job”.
Add to this a rigid curriculum to be transacted in a limited time for facing a rigorous examination that is faceless, followed by an even more faceless evaluation for which ultimate accountability is to be borne in 1: 40 ratio not to speak of cumulative deficiencies contributed by other factors, a teacher conveniently adopts the middle course of monotonously addressing the average. The individual is lost in the average be it the higher order or the lower order extreme. Whether the rich become richer or not, the poor definitely become poorer and the individual differences widen further, making the heterogeneity more pronounced. The mass education has come to stay in centuries to come and hence except providing limited choices a common philosophy is very much inevitable in deciding the nation’s education policy and hence at least up to secondary level solutions to individualized instruction cannot be sought as much in diversification as in reconciliation.
A constructivist teacher therefore should be adept in reconciling the infinite variables into a viable class room solution. It is important to know your child, every one of them. This pedagogically speaking would require understanding how each child constructs knowledge and forms concepts. Every time a child internalizes some knowledge it is an outcome of a process involving repeated observation, correlating to construct an emerging pattern, drawing inference, adopting and applying, questioning for further discovery and expansion.
The algorithm of the process of learning may be presented thus: Each child at any stage starts with some knowledge accommodates new experiences by reconciling/assimilating with the existing and reframes. Thus accommodation is the process of reframing one’s mental representation of external world to fit new experiences. The child is not isolated but works in an interactive environment. The instructor is not absent, his role is to facilitate, create environment, to assess, to orient if the learner wanders or goes beyond.
It is often associated with pedagogy approaches that promote learning by doing. Accepting therefore that children are unique and differences a natural consequence, constructivism advocates freedom to choose learners’ pace. In providing for this should a constructivist teacher have 40 different paces for a particular task? Just as one cannot force a mango tree out of a tamarind seed, there are inherent interests and aptitudes in each individual. Does it mean learning beyond one’s interests is impossible? But then there have been those who preferred to be musicians but ended up as mathematicians! There are other questions that are pertinent to context. Does Constructivism expect reinvention or invention? Is construction of knowledge ultimate at any stage or it may be revisited? When does it start? Does a constructivist teacher not instruct?
In trying to answer these questions one realizes that not only the teacher but also the administrator of an institution who should adopt a constructivist approach! First we accept that if students are individually different so are the teachers. Hence let them be empowered! There may not be a need to set as many learning paces as there are students if a teacher can effectively use the underlying philosophy of continuous comprehensive evaluation. It is a powerful tool to determine minimum number of levels of learning. Understanding that learning takes place unconsciously, formally, informally through several agents is very important to a constructivist teacher. Only then he/she can effectively reconcile the variety of resources available in peer group, family, society to which the students belong in facilitating their construction of knowledge. Understanding that integration across disciplines is a very powerful tool to turn weaknesses into strengths is yet another tool in the hands of a constructivist teacher. That there is a vertical integration in the construction of knowledge is a very important input to the constructivist teacher who would then be flexible enough to interact in his/her own peer group to ensure smooth transition from one class to another. Instruction is modified to make arbitrary exploration a guided tour by providing just enough milestones that would lead to the target. In the process the teacher himself/herself may gain new insights, new inroads for his/her own evolution.
The teacher still works with the syllabus and plans curricular activities which involve:
Targeting an expected outcome
Dividing into learning stages in a logical sequence from known to unknown
Planning activities for each stage
Facilitating construction of knowledge by the students at the end of his experience of each activity
Helping to express in a discipline specific language
Assess at the end of each stage
Make good shortfalls, if any
Have a mind set to facilitate further exploration, If additional knowledge more than expected by the teacher emerges
Provide platform for exchange with fellow mates and experts
Not to curb but to ADD is the motto
Facilitating summing up for holistic understanding which may require generalization of hypothesis constructed
Several attributes are gained by children that are more useful to society. Some of these are:
More focused ability to observation
Inclination to pattern seeking
Improvement of power of correlation, comparison, reasoning, spirit of enquiry and discovery
Ability to construct meaningful knowledge
More creativity and imagination
Ability to innovate and invent
Communication sharpened
Ability to concretize the abstract through the medium of language
Deductive process takes over from Inductive process and the child can glide smoothly from one to the other
Thus the constructive teacher is empowered to devise activities that optimize output for different calibers. Hence he/she is not repetitive. Rather he/she improvises and innovates and becomes a repository of wisdom to handle the most complex process of creating fine human resources. If every teacher is motivated thus excellence will be a natural product.
Commentaires