Constructivism in an Intermediate Grade Classroom.

ETEC 530, Assignment #1 Jeremy Inscho

Introduction: After starting my career in secondary math and sciences with an approach that was very data and contentdriven, I recently transitioned to elementary school, and now teach upper intermediate grades as a generalist teacher. Making this change has provided the impetus to critically analyze my educational philosophy and practice and align the former with the latter. Perhaps not surprisingly, I found that the two were often dissimilar, and I set about to make informed changes. Based on a general belief in social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978), situated cognition (Brown, Collins & Daguid, 1989; Driscoll, 2005; Lave & Wenger, 1991; and Rudolph, 1994), activity theory (Nardi, 1996; Spasser, 1999), and using specific examples, this discussion paper articulates some of the changes I have made in my classroom, the reasoning behind them and some of the challenges that remain. PBL as a Beginning: As an acronym, PBL is a vague term that is often used to describe any one of a variety of teaching strategies included frequently included under the umbrella of inquiry. My initial understanding of PBL came in the form of project based learning requiring students to focus their efforts in creating a meaningful project or task that demonstrates their understanding of significant content (Savery & Duffy, 1995). As such, a typical grade six social studies project might be to plan a two-week trip to Europe and then, through journal entries, describe their experience as if they took the trip making note to comment on the people they met, the local customs, as well as the tourist excursions they took. The value I found in such a project was that it was an applied project and crosscurricular. Students had to use their math skills to solve budgetary problems, learn the local geography in order to connect flights, trains and tourist attractions that did not have them crisscrossing the continent. They also learned about the local history when describing tourist attractions and architecture, and studied the modern culture to be able to report on the similarities and differences between what they saw and what they are accustomed to at home. The challenges I encountered with projects of this type were three-fold. First, I was not convinced of their significance. Research suggests that projects have two essential components: They require a question or problem that serves to organize and drive activities; and these activities result in a series of artifacts or products, that culminate in a final product that addresses the driving question (Blumenfeld, Solloway, Marx, Krajcil, Guzdial & Palincsar, 1991). While students tended to be engaged in such a project, I questioned the depth of their learning and concluded that first component described by Blumenfeld et al. (1991) was missing, or trivial, in this approach. This also led to problem based learning (Savery & Duffy, 1995; Wee, Kek & Sim, 2001) and social action, as I interpreted meaningful problems to be social problems that lead to such action. Second, there was a lack of social collaboration incorporated, though the students still sought it out through the sharing of research and plans to meet each other during their

travels. Social constructivists such as Vygotsky (1978) emphasize the role of society in the learning and though society may not be directly interacting with the learner at all times, learning takes place within a context and culture and is inextricable from them according to proponents of situated cognition (Brown, Collins & Daguid, 1989; Driscoll 2005 and Rudolph, 1994). Furthermore, these authors and others (Lave & Wenger, 1991; and Wenger, 1998) go on to explain that significant cognition only occurs as a participant of a knowledge community or community of practice. This led to the intentional development of a community of learners1 in the class that will be discussed further, later in this paper. Third, students often seemed to lack some of the basic skills required to be successful. Undoubtedly, this is a problem increasingly faced by educators everywhere with increasing diversity in their classrooms and was noted by Blumenfeld, et al.; Brown, Collins and Duguid; and many others (See Eichinger, Anderson Palincsar & David, 1991). This led me scaling back the scope of projects and creating multi-leveled projectsor projects within projects. Problems of Significance: Moving from project based learning to problem based learning was an attempt to increase motivation and significance in student learning in my classroom. Learning projects that are created in response to prescribed learning outcomes such that the project is an artifact representative of the learning that occurred during the project fail to sufficiently engage all learners because there are many students that simply not interested in many of the topics. However, reframing projects from telling about something to doing something about, engages learners on multiple levels. On the surface, students still learn about the topics that carry with them various levels of engagement, but also draw on students human nature as problem solvers. Students may or may not be interested in a particular topic, but if there is a problem involved that is seen as significant and solvable, or in which students can contribute toward solving, then their motivation to participate increases. To address a significant and solvable problem, I developed a project in which students examined many aspects of poverty. While it would have been sufficient to meet the prescribed learning outcomes by examining the cycle of poverty in third world countries, the significance of the problem was greatly increased (from the students perspectives) when they discovered that they live in a region, according to government data, with unusually high poverty and child poverty rates (British Columbia Statistics, 2006; Statistics Canada, 2011). As a result, the class developed a plan to address poverty within their means both locally and internationally. A food drive was organized to benefit local families in need and a penny drive raised funds to support entrepreneurs in underdeveloped countries through Kiva microloans. Microloans were chosen for their ability to help break the cycle of poverty because many of the loans targeted education, and more specifically the education of women and girls, and because the loans will be reinvested upon repayment. Furthermore, awareness will be increased through the upcoming feature of the class project on the Kiva website coordinated through the

Education Development Manger at Kiva (J. Hansen, electronic communication, 2 January 2013). This poverty project met each of the criteria described by Malone and Lepper (1987) for Engaging and motivating students and as such, it was highly participatory and engaging for students of varying ability allowing them to participate at a level appropriate for their ability level, previous knowledge and understanding thus meeting my pedagogical and curricular needs. Communities of Learning: Creating communities of learning has been an explicit, experiential process in my classroom with elements drawn from cognitive research and First Nations tradition. The process begins with a workshop on defining community of learners introduced to me by District Instructional Coordinators Lynn Brown and DJ Thompson. In the workshop, students work in small groups to socially negotiate (Savery & Duffy, 1995) the meaning of learner, then of community. Afterward, this learning is used to construct an understanding of community of learners. Based on their interpretations of a community of learners, groups create comic strips of conflict resolution within such a community and role-play the experience. Students note and discuss the differences between the role-play and what typically happens in a classroom. From the groups notes and discussions, the workshop facilitator extrapolates the ideas of communication, cooperation, commitment and (self)controlwhat we call the four Cs. The four Cs allow for common language between classrooms and schools in the district, but the meaning of each remains explicitly and socially negotiated in each classroom. In the workshop, students synthesize their earlier work to identify and create a representation of the meaning of each of the four Cs. Most recently in my class, a poster was created to list key words associated with what each of the four Cs looks like, sounds like and feels like in a school or classroom setting. Similar to what is experience early in the year in the community of learners workshop, students participate is group work within their learning projects to elaborate on what they have learned individually and synthesize what they have done as a whole. The process of this group work, however, is very structured and goes beyond simply discussing ideas and information. Based on the work of Nancy Mohr (McDonald, Mohr, Dichter & McDonald, 2007), students follow strict protocol designed to give each person a voice and encourage others to listen for understanding transform their own understanding and synergistically construct a group understanding. In addition to the community of learners work and use of discussion protocols, I also implement talking circles to build community. Based on First Nations traditions, talking circles use a set of norms to provide a discussion platform and mode of conflict resolution and restorative justice (Stanton, 2002). While talking circles are constructivist in nature and an important piece of the classroom culture, there is insufficient space here to treat them judiciously.

Mini-problems and Multi-leveled Problems: As may already be evident from my discussion of my students poverty project and the community of learners workshop, the challenge of ensuring students have sufficient background knowledge and basic skills required to achieve highly on their learning projects has been partly addressed by breaking down the projects into incremental tasks or multi-leveled problems. This strategy is encouraged by Savery and Duffy (1995) and Blumenfeld et al. (1991), but was not the only strategy implemented. Recognizing a discrepancy between project based learning as described by Blumenfeld et al (1995) and the problem based learning described by Savery and Duffy (1995), it became clear that the scope of a problem as a meaningful unit of study is frequently much smaller than a project and therefore problematizing (Hiebert et al., 1996) is an appropriate pedagogical strategy for dealing with basic knowledge and skills that do not fit well into larger projects. An example of this from my classroom is in my recent treatment of subtraction of fractions whereby I introduced a partially completed magic square (Brown, Collins & Daguid, 1989) as a problem for students to solve. Students were able to realize the requisite knowledge (how a magic square works), and develop a solution. Interestingly, only one group used subtraction. The others all found solutions by determining what they needed to add to get from one addend to the sum. This then led to a discussion on the appropriateness of multiple and alternative solutions to problems and the differences between solutions that might be found by students, teachers and just plain folks. Conclusion: Creating a constructivist environment in my classroom has been a multi-faceted project drawing on social constructivist theory and application of various interpretations of PBL. In making the transition, which is by no means complete, I have critically analyzed my practice and made adjustments when challenges arise to bring that practice in line with theory. As a result, I have witnessed an increased depth of learning, social responsibility and motivation in my students. Footnotes: 1 The term community of learners, is used preferentially over knowledge community or community of practice, as the latter terms typically refer to groups involved in an authentic activity practiced outside of school settings, whereas the practice of this group is learning but it does not prevent them from legitimate participation in communities of practice. References: Blumenfeld, P.C., Soloway, E., Marx, R.W., Krajcik, J.S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991). Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational Psychologist, 26, 369-398. British Columbia Statistics, (2006). 2006 Census profile for Nanaimo regional district. Retrieved from http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca Brown, J. S., Collins, A. & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning.Educational Researcher, 18 (1) pp.32-42.

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