Reflection_on_Constructivism

Introduction I feel that reflection is something that an effective educator does instinctively for themselves. If you are not the type of individual who automatically spends time considering the how and why success or failure of your time with students in the classroom then perhaps teaching is not for you. Hong Kong is a competitive society. Keen competition can be particularly revealed by the Hong Kong Education System. In many time, we believe that there is competition, there is progress. So we love comparing, ranking, appreciating or censuring students. In fact, the more competition in the society, the more collaboration is needed and constructivism does help in teaching and learning. Though this sounds like a paradox, from my teaching experiences this year, in particular the practicum, I found that constructivist teaching is effective to assist myself as a teacher for professional development to help my students learn better in Chinese Language. In this paper, I am going to argue that Constructivism can be a good facilitator in helping students improve their reading strategies in tackling Chinese passages. Traditional Chinese Teaching in Reading Strategies V.S. Constructivism Traditional Chinese Language Teaching focuses on training students' capability in four aspects including: reading, speaking, listening and wrting. Pedagogic approaches used by most Chinese teachers remains still on teacher-centered classrooms and the use of rote-memory strategies. Students are expected to acquire higher proficiency through more reading and reciting . In fact, Hong Kong Chinese teachers seldom teach students about reading strategies.(謝錫金, 2003) Most researches focused only on the ability of students to aquire certain reading strategies(蕭炳基與蘇月華, 1997), not to metioned if students can learn to learn. The theory of constructivism by Vygotsky( Gao, 2010, P1-9) suggests that we learn by the construction of new knowledge based on our prior knowledge in the zone of proximal development. To align with the learning process, teaching should also be in the zone of proximal development; and in order to let students "construct" their knowledge base on their prior knowledge, the traditional direct teaching should be replaced by the more student-centered, interactive type of teaching which can stimulate students' thinking and active learning inside classroom. However, there are some critiques on constructivist teaching such as vague learning goals, unstructured lessons, open ended student activity, minimal input from teachers and etc. (see appendix 1) In my teaching experiences, I found that constrcutivist teaching didnt necessarily has the above shortcomings. We dont have vague goals in teaching, every lesson was tailored-made to my students, with the aim to help them aquire deeper learning through scaffolding. According to Berk & Winsler(1995), supports can be given during the learning process which is tailored to the needs of the student with the intention of helping the student achieve his/her learning goals. These supports are gradually removed as students develop autonomous learning strategies. More importantly, what I've learned most was that with constructivism, teaching of reading strategies allowed students more active involvement in constructing their own ideas of the Chinese passages. They gradually develop critiques of the authors' ideas as well as promoting their own cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning skills and knowledge. Constructivist teaching in Chinese Reading Strategies People might think that a constructivist lesson does not need much preparation for teachers as students can learn knowledge constructed by themselves. During practicum, I would say that if you dont want to be fired by school, implemetation of constructivist teaching actaully involve more preparation than direct teaching. Under Examination of The Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE), students are no longer examined with only 26 compulsory Chinese passages. They are targeted to have good command of all the modern and classical Chinese passages. To a teacher himself, the preparation work of reading passages is already a tough job. With limited teaching time, the questions of what to teach , how to teach and how much can the students learn, come to be very essential. To a teacher with little teaching experiences like me, somehow I discovered that teaching of reading strategies emphasises quality but not quantity. Helping students build their own habbits to understand the meaning of a passage is important. Thoughout the whole year of constructivist teaching, I'd implemented some methods I learned in this course. In the following parts, I would focus on reflection about the methods to actualize constructivist teaching. 1. Concept Maps In a concept map, each word or phrase is connected to another and linked back to the original idea, word or phrase. Concept maps are a way to develop logical thinking and study skills by revealing connections and helping students see how individual ideas form a larger whole. Concept maps were developed to enhance meaningful learning. Because concept maps are constructed to reflect organization of the declarative memory system, they facilitate sense-making and meaningful learning on the part of individuals who make concept maps and those who use them. Appendix 2 shows a concept map done by a group of Form one students. During the lesson, I told the students to understand the context of the articles, they are allowed to look up dictionary for vocabularies, then they need to draw a concept map after group discussion. What impressed me the most was that, students become more participative and attentative during the lesson. In comparing to direct lecture, they were more eager to make noice and discuss. After discussion, they were eager to modify their concept maps because they were asked to present their work in front of the class. Base on their presentation, I could tell whether they had fully understood the context and the message conveyed and to provide feeback at once. 2. Reciprocal Teaching According to Palincsar and Brown (1984), reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that takes place in the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text. The dialogue is structured by the use of four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher and students take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading this dialogue. I found it big different to traditional teaching, me and my students need some time to adpat this teaching mode. During the lessons, I didnt explain the context of the articles, rather I made it a more interactive approach by using questions, worksheets and short dramas to stimulates students' interests. In many time, they tended to be more active for a narration and argumentation, but poor responses was resulted for explanory articles. (See Appendix 3 and 4 ) 3. On-line Knowledge Forum On-line Knowledge Forum provides students and teachers with a unique collaborative space in which to share ideas and data, organize course materials, analyze research results, discuss texts, and cite reference material. Knowledge Forum allows users to create a knowledge building community. Each community creates its own Knowledge. We'd fully utilized the school intranet system to share ideas over different passages from time to time. I was required to throw out different topic for them to discuss and they were encouraged to exchange ideas though the platform, finally at the end of the term, their participation would be graded. I found it was very effective way to check students' understanding of the topic, as they can feel free to ask any questions and come up with different ideas. The more the participation, the higher the grade, so ultinately, their learning motivation was enhanced. (See appendix 5-7) Conclusion In short, I admit that language learning requires years of efforts. To successfully help students build good habbit in reading , I would say it depends on whether constructivist teaching could be accpeted by teachers themselves. With no doubt, the training on Reading Strategies of Chinese passages is to let our students learn to read themselves. There are still lots of reasons that constructivist teaching cannot be effective, for instance, teacher-expectation effect, students' motivation and etc. Therefore, reflection from time to time becomes more important. Just simply questoins, “Is this working'” If you as a teacher don’t take time to post-mortem your day, your week, your quarter, or your year in the classroom, then you simply will not improve as a teacher.