This article by Peggy A. Ertmer and Timothy Newby, “Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective” discusses three central learning theories, behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism, and compares their key features from several instructional design perspectives.
Understanding each of these three concepts created a challenge for me, as I may not have been able to remember everything due to a large amount of reading. So for this article, I am phasing in a mind map format to give me a basic idea of the whole article.
I strongly agree with the article’s discussion of behaviourism, that learning results from a conditioned response and that the learning environment provided by the teacher should have appropriate stimulus and feedback to facilitate learning. Repetitive training should be conducted to achieve the desired outcome. At the same time, I agree with the effectiveness of this view, as well as the expectations. It seems very reasonable that when better work is done, it is rewarded and when it is not done better, it is punished. But ethically, I think it’s a form of animal training, which I find hard to accept.
The idea of constructivism, which feels overly optimistic to me, is that in constructivist theory, learners need to construct their own system of knowledge by interacting with others and engaging in practice in real situations. Students are guided by this theory to engage in an immersive “apprenticeship” experience, gaining experience and confidence. However, in my opinion, this is very difficult and not all students are suited to go directly into work situations, which can be confusing and even lead to low confidence. Constructivism involves interacting with other students, which can be very challenging for some silent students. On top of that, there are already many group discussion sessions in the world where some students are low self-esteem, lazy or some other emotions and refuse to have a discussion, which is negative for both students.
In the last semester of my studies, I was involved in a field school teaching activity. They also adopted constructivism and the initial learning experience was very painful for me. Because I am a non-native speaker, basic communication was extremely stressful for me. Although after four months of study, my English level and my understanding of the major had improved a lot. In my opinion, the constructivist emphasis on immersion experience may be very powerful for a student to improve, but it may also cause many negative effects, such as the growth of an inferiority complex. How to manage the scale of this is a matter of great discussion.
Recent Comments