ASSIGNMENT ON SOCIAL SCIENCE - ICT AND CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH IN SOCIAL SCIENCE

     ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC: 

ICT AND CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH IN SOCIAL SCIENCES: SCOPE AND CHALLENGES

SUBMITTED BY:

              ALPHONSA JOSEPH

              SOCIAL SCIENCE

Introduction

The rapid development of information and communication technology has great implications for the constructivist approach to teaching social science. It offers a tremendous amount of information, tools for creativity and development, and various environments and forums for communication. Within a student-centered curriculum, the study is based on student performance or research and new technology tools provide many opportunities for students and teachers to build knowledge in an engaged setting.

Significant changes brought in the social, economical and cultural areas of society necessitated the need for new ways of literacy and new forms of expertise, often referred to collectively as 21^st century learning. This learning involves critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration, creativity and innovation, information, media and technology skills,  life and career skills. 

Constructivist practices have been predicted as the most suitable use of ICTs, and it has been widely assumed that the introduction of ICT will be accompanied by the adoption of this approach to teaching. In the literature on ICT in teaching, the term 'constructivist practices' refers to student centred learning, where there is teacher-student and student-student collaboration and co-construction of knowledge, in contrast to teacher-centred practice which involves explicit instruction, knowledge transmission, linear knowledge development, and more directly observable learning outcomes. There is no doubt that new educational technologies are always charged with exciting pedagogical properties and there is an understanding of the type of knowledge that its learners ideally need to develop for the 21st century. 

Constructivist Learning Theories

Constructivism proposes that learning environments should support multiple perspectives or interpretations of reality, knowledge construction, and context-rich, experience-based activities.Now there are various sources for  innovative ideas on teaching and learning. Students are now learners who come to the classroom with their unique backgrounds, experience, conceptual understanding, learning styles and personal circumstances. Teachers now become learning facilitators rather than reservoirs of knowledge. Psychology of learning has shifted from behaviorism to cognitivism and to constructivism.

The guiding principle of constructivist learning theories is the learner’s own active initiative and control in learning, and personal knowledge construction, i.e. the self-regulation of learning.  The student does not passively take in knowledge, but actively constructs it on the basis of his/her prior knowledge and experiences.

The learner’s learning activities should be directed at examining his own prior conceptions and relating it to the new knowledge. The learning environment should provide the learner with opportunities to test and try out his new conceptual understanding in various applied circumstances like problem solving. Constructivism can therefore be contrasted with objectivism, the traditional view that knowledge is an external entity with an absolute value which can be transferred from teacher to learner.

A learner encounters a situation, acts on it and then thinks about what he has done, makes inferences from the experience, determines implications, and retains the experiences and reflections. The social constructivism focuses on knowledge, being a product of activity, is situated in context and culture. Knowledge is constructed and communicated through culture and social institutions, and therefore the dimensions of constructivist learning theories can be differentiated by examining the significance of the individual and the environment in the process of knowledge construction.

It was Vygotsky who pioneered a sociocultural approach to understanding cognitive processes in childhood development. He studied how social and cultural interactions were critical to cognitive functions. He believed that it is the need to interact and communicate in socio-cultural context that makes human cognitive development intellectual and distinct from animal cognition. By highlighting the effects of social interactions on cognitive development, Vygotsky revealed a critical role that external activities play in sparking internal mental constructions. Understanding this interplay is at the heart of the paradigm of constructivism.

Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development(ZPD) emphasizes his belief that learning is fundamentally a socially mediated activity. This zone is defined as the distance between a child’s “actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving” and the higher level of “potential development as determined through problem solving” under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. Vygotsky argued that instruction should be tied more closely to the level of potential development than to the level of actual development.

Constructionists claim that learners construct knowledge most naturally

and completely while they are constructing some artifacts. It is the idea of mental construction. Active learning involves using knowledge and skills to generate a product and this involve investigating to create a solution to a problem. A teaching strategy with ICT enabled the generative learning.

Realistic problems allow students to take ownership of their solutions, develop deeper, richer knowledge structures, require more systematic problem solving methods, and are more likely to benefit from collaborative efforts. Collaboration with fellow students can have several benefits to learning. Students can encounter different points of view which may identify ineffective solutions to problems, clarify misconceptions, and give rise to synergistic insights. Group members must understand their different roles and learn to accommodate conflicting ideas. This reinforces individual responsibility and has been shown to have positive effects on motivation to learn.

ICT and the Constructivism- A Paradigm Shift

There is wide consensus in education that learning is no longer seen simply as the result of a transmission of knowledge. Nowadays pedagogical strategies employed in the current ICT-based learning are linked to constructivist paradigm. According to constructivism, knowledge is considered to be socially and individually constructed, learning is the acquisition of meaningful competences in a realistic context, learning is advanced through interactive and authentic experiences that dovetail with the interests of the student and through active learning. So the focus is on the development of a suitable environment for constructing knowledge rather than for its transfer.

In such an environment the use of ICT can trigger constructivist innovation in the classroom contributing to the realization of meaningful authentic, active-reflective and problem-based learning, a method that challenges students to "learn how to learn", students seek solutions to real world problems, which, based on an ICT framework, are used to engage their curiosity and initiate learning, leading so to critical and analytical thinking.

The constructivist education philosophy aims at a school where students learn how to learn, in a learner-centered environment with emphasis on learning through discovery and exploration and on experiences in the development of problem-solving strategies. The ICT used teaching learning best deals with this objective of education.

ICT & Constructivism in Social Studies

Meaningful learning of social studies content, skills, and values through a constructivist approach is designed to help teachers to facilitate students development into problem solving and decision making who take an active role as citizens of their world. The appropriate ICT-enhanced activities, critical examples and strategies that can be applied in the study of social science and practiced constructivist innovation. It provided opportunities to examine how ICT can be used to promote a constructivist, learner-centered approach to learn social science subjects.

It is designed the strategies for teaching powerful social studies, the structure of the knowledge to be learned and the theory and research explaining meaningful learning in social studies.  The students need to construct knowledge in their own minds for it to be meaningful to them. ICT offer a range of different tools for use in the school activities like projector based learning, audio visual learning, social issues based learning, computer controlled microscope and map, publishing and presentation system etc. 

The ICT enabled social science class is the basic motivating factor for the students to work with more interest and zeal. The students also got the clear image about the subject matter. The clear ideas were formed  when we see, hear and touch with our direct experiences. These direct experiences will be concrete and permanent in the minds of the students.

The use of ICT in social science classes gave the freedom to the students to learn in an effective environment. ICT used learning is great scope for children to talk, laugh,critique and comment upon the subject matter. ICT used constructive learning give variety in the learning environment as well as in the subject matter. The students got sensory experiences through the visual and hearing mediums. Which will enable them to remember and recollect whenever necessary. ICT provide real life experiences to the students. It promotes realism and it is the antidote to the verbal instruction. ICT used social science study is more effective and pupil centered.

The constructivist use of ICT in social science teaching will gives:

·       Emphasis on learning rather than instruction

·       The learning is considered asa process

·      The priority should be given to how to learn the social science subjects and how can we imbibe the objectives of studying social science

·       It promotes the instinctive curiosity of the learners

·       It promotes the spirit of enquiry

·       The learners can construct their own mental models for studying the subjects

·       It promotes the ability of exploration though the use of internet and computer facilities.

·       The students can experience the learning rather than a mere rote learning

·       It gives more priority to the social contexts which the students are living

·       It encourages the cooperative and collaborative learning and promotes group activity and communication among students and between the teacher and students

·       It is based on the strong psychological principles and caters the individual difference of the learners.

·       It gives the opportunity for the learners to create, construct and enlarge new ideas and concepts in their learning.

The Scope for ICT-enhanced Constructivist Learning

ICT-enhanced constructivist classroom practices, however, demand that teachers play a new role. This means that opportunities, like exposure to a number of critical examples and experience in designing ICT-based activities and integrating them in their classroom practice in constructivist ways are of great priority. The aim is to convince teachers for the potentiality of ICT as constructivist learning tool through their own personal experience. For this reason the development and implementation of appropriate courses is very important for the teachers’ professional development and crucial for the success of innovative approaches using ICT.

Teachers need to go beyond traditional approaches and become acquainted with new methods in order to get a clear understanding of the educational functionality of technological tools in their educational practices. The approaches to staff training include the need for awareness of the advantages and possible difficulties of the proposed methods for school learning and usage of settings and tools for training similar to those expected to be used in classrooms in the sense of learning by doing and applying the new knowledge in real learning contexts.

Challenges of ICT and Constructivist Approach

With the wider scope of ICT and constuctivist approach in teaching, we need to rethink whether we really want constructivist practices as our aspiration or whether our aspiration should be learning conducive to our current society. The teachers can prepare students for life and work in our current society without using constructivist practices. A single-minded pursuit of constructivist practices alone may actually be a hindrance to learning and may obstruct the opportunity for teachers and school leaders to learn about what meaningful pedagogy with ICT might be.

Conclusion

The generalized adoption of constructivist teaching practices in schools is unlikely to be achieved simply through the extensive resourcing of ICT in schools. It would most likely require a shift in emphasis within the syllabus, from specific content knowledge towards non-cognitive outcomes, values and citizenship education, as well as a strong emphasis on informal learning. Professional development in support of these constructivist practices would also need to allow for the depth and complexity of teachers' commitment to their current approaches to teaching and unearth the inherent innovative intellectual and creative potentials of the students ,thus enabling them to ponder and critique on the prodigious steams of universal knowledge.