In Warrington's article, she points out a lot of advantages to constructivism. She talks about how the students are encouraged to think deeply about the math concepts. With this they learn to invent their own methods of solving problems. In the very beginning, they learned to make rules for solving the simple fractions. This helped them solve the harder questions. Another advantage is that the students got involved. They all worked together to solve the problem given to them. This helped build unity in the classroom. The students also learned to find mathematical relationships. When they were solving a question, they noticed that you can double the fraction so the numbers are more simple to work with. They, in essence, learned to construct their own relationships of fractions.
Although there some advantages, there are a couple of flaws with this method of teaching. One of the biggest is that it can take a long time to solve a question. For example, the students tried to solve 4 2/5 divided by 1/3. After a long time of thinking and working on it, they finally found the solution, but this process wastes valuable time. Another disadvantage with constructivism, is that the students have disagreements. Some of these disagreements take a long time to resolve and they can also waste class time. Not all of the material needed to be covered, can be with a constructivism. Although there are a lot of advantages to constructive learning, there are some disadvantages that need to be looked at also.
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I think youre explanation of Warrinton was straight and to the point. you pointed out advantages and then contrasted them with disadvantages in the same context. I agree it being time consuming because it does take a lot of time to go through a problem trying to use what you already know to figure it out without any other guidance. but thanks for your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the advantages. I think however that constructivism is not a waste of time. I think constructivism is a good teaching method that just takes more time but does not waste it. I really like your thinking though.
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job organizing your blog entry. You had clear topic sentences that highlighted your paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteLearning a concept in this manner can take a lot longer. However, now the students understand the concept. In the future, time will not have to be spent going back and relearning everything you have learned before. Also, in this method the math has meaning so it applies to new situations, rather than learning a new method every time you come to a different type of problem.
Also, I think students being able to discuss disagreements and listen to each other and reason is a huge advantage to this style of teaching. Not only will that skill be beneficial in mathematics, it will be beneficial in their lives as they communicate with people.
I think its a big advantage that the students spend a lot of time thinking about the principles as you stated. It allows them to more fully understand the relationship between fractions and numbers. I believe that the disagreements are overall beneficial to the students learning. It does take a lot of time to discuss the solutions and methods, but it is not a waste of time. I believe it to be a valuable use of time. Students learn a lot from their peers and from such discussions.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your advantages and disadvantages. I especially understood the idea of how this style can take a longer amount of time. Time that could be taken doing something else. But I also think it's important to point out the disadvantage of the teacher not telling the children the answer. Children could continually be creating the wrong answer and if the teacher never tells them their wrong, it could be worse for them later.
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